A very concise way to present an excellent analysis. Unsurprisingly, RU has lagged in giving him what he needs to negotiate this landscape. It may be that he has miscalculated in his player evaluations, but I think it is more likely that his very early overtures to other potential transfers went nowhere based on the price tag. When SHU has almost twice the bag that he has something is wrong. I remember at the height of his popularity I posted that when he hits the inevitable bump in the road, he should get a little extra patience. Not just because of what he had done reviving the program, but also because of his added value in being a true all in RU guy, a cheerleader for all of the sports programs and a good representative of the university. I got a hell of a lot of thumbs up on that at the time. I know that kind of stuff doesn’t take you that far in this business. However, it should buy him enough time to see what he can do when the university gets him a little more in the way of resources.
Has Pike given up?
- Thread starter rpiseman
- Start date
I actually wish we had Jalen Miller. In his last year at Oral Roberts when he became a starter, he averaged close to 10 points a game shooting 46% from three-point range on pretty good volume and playing very good defense. I know the competition was different, but still.
Sorry the bump in the road was team falling apart due to poor recruiting in 2023..a 14-17 pre nil disaster and 2024 and debacle with 2 top 5 picks in 2025 and now a MAAC mid pack roster the worst power 5 school in the nation
He had his mulligans
Pike is over
Scary but perhaps true…and he couldn’t even start for an 11-22 last place AAC Charlotte team as a senior. I remember when Pike left him in vs. Luka Garza and he got destroyed 3 times in a row for layups and we never recovered.
Woolfolk would legit be our best big.
Last edited:
Reiber regressed and Woolf did not progress. Grant has developed and is better than both of them and Dortch has shown progress from last year. The issue is that Pike appears to be still operating as if developing players over a 2-3 year period is the current norm in what is essentially a year to year free agency frenzy under the portal and NIL rules. This makes him ineffective, but not a quitter (as the OP is implying) nor disgraceful (as the OP has called him in numerous posts on this board). The team is not good, but continual fan histrionics will do nothing to make it better.
BS - he didn’t have the NIL resources to make us a Final 4 team, but whatever we had should’ve been enough to make the tournament. He brought in the wrong type of support players. His priority was making sure Dylan and Ace could excel and he thought that winning would go hand in hand with that. He was wrong. We needed better D which could’ve come at the same cost as what we brought in by compromising some history or offensive success at low majors. Sure - having a better center would’ve made us much better but we should’ve been a tournament team even without that.
On your other point - Greg has disappointed but the level of failure is in no way comparable to where we are right now in basketball. Come on. Yeah 5-7 stinks, but all 7 of those losses were to teams that finished with 7+ wins. PSU and Minny went down to the wire. Pike’s current team has potential to rank up there among the worst ever Rutgers men’s basketball teams. We lost to CC and almost lost to Penn without their best player. We might not win a conference game and we will have many opportunities against weak conference opponents. I hope to be wrong and this team ends up being “bad” at the level of football but that is trending towards unlikely.
Pike had very little NIL the past 3 seasons. Richie estimated that was bottom 5% in the power conferences for basketball. That is essentially a death sentence for the program.