All these things listed, Knight remaining on staff, TF not going with Knight elsewhere (a positive), Mark not entering portal (also a positive), ultimately are just maintaining the Status Quo. Same as it ever was. Pike has had 3 straight losing seasons. We need changes, thus far our big change of direction is Lewis Duarte and no front court additions? There have been no new Big 10 starting level players added? I would have thought the first thing in the portal he would have done would be to add NEW starters, as many as possible especially frontcourt players, prioritize return of TF to play with new starters, then backfill roster with players Pike wants to bring back from last season and backfill with the Lewis Duarte’s of the world to fill out the roster from the portal. They definitely have not gone in this direction.
Portal Targets
- Thread starter MCKnight
- Start date
Hopefully people making million dollar decisions aren’t treating it like fantasy football and just looking at box scores
Then again we’re targeting players averaging 1 ppg on bad big east teams
maybe the staff reads the boards and needs some ideas…. Here are a few centers available
Stefan Cicic -Pepperdine
Arringten Page -Northwestern, very skilled
Stefan Cicic -Pepperdine
Arringten Page -Northwestern, very skilled
I agree, I feel the same way. Just sharing my thoughts process lol.
I really try to be a glass half full guy but this situation is very depressing.
Not picking on you Mholinko but Fans are panicking (again) over lots of “if’s”.
Yes, if he doesn’t get a quality big they are I trouble.
Yes, if they don’t spend the money wisely they are in trouble.
They know this.
If they fail, they are done. Maybe Pike is not aggressive enough in this NIL world. No one knows what will happen but we’ll see the complete roster in 1-2 months and we can judge it then. In the meantime, this feels like Greg’s DC hire. Lots of panic because of lack of information.
Past history may be giving of us an idea of what will happen for a predictor of future performance
Maybe he doesn’t know? Seems his focus is on PG which means either A) we have enough money to afford both (unlikely) or B) somehow he thinks upgrading PG is enough of a priority that it’s worth slashing down our center budget (which probably was low to begin with). It just doesn’t make sense considering we resigned 2 PGs from the previous roster.
There is no information. So saying he seems focused on anything is a pure guess. I will go back to the Greg DC fiasco. Everyone’s assumptions (including the staff here) were wildly incorrect.
Which past history? When he had no NIL money to work with? Before NIL? This is a new scenario.
Not really. We have more money, but market prices have gone up a ton which neutralizes that.
We had $3-4 Mil, we couldn’t get it done as far as getting a big. We now have increased the NIL to $10 Mil, well I doubt we are getting it done as far as getting a quality big here. We have increased NIL but yet it appears we are still amongst the “have nots” as opposed to the haves. This is the past history, you can blame it on NIL, blame it on whatever you like, reality is past history says we have not had or acquired a quality Big since we had Cliff. With this increased NIL budget I assumed we would make this the first and foremost priority, make it our first portal acquisition and spend a good chunk of our budget on this need for a big, yet it has not happened and having doubts it will. Recent history says we be looking at another patchwork season of Ogbole/Dortch/Fall type of guys to play in the frontcourt. With increased NIL, wasn’t this the year we get a quality, rim protecting big to anchor Pike’s defense first approach??
No - I’m not sure you could. We probably don’t have enough transparency to attempt it. Reports say costs up 65% on average but that’s a blended average. And it would not account for whatever the current premium (Rutgers tax) we’d have to pay above what another more desirable team is offering to lure in a recruit.
At the end of the day, we may have more money this time, but potentially it doesn’t move the needle much at all in terms of what it can help us bring in.
The biggest difference this time is instead of starting with just Grant, Davis and Dortch (all except Grant, deep reserves), were positioned to bring back 3 guys who averaged 24+ mpg and 2 frosh who saw more and more minutes as the season went on. That’d be a way better starting point IF we could land a center and a PF. If our pot of money isn’t enough to attract either, we’re still screwed.
Last year for the 4/5 we had:
Ogbole/Dortch/Fall/Ware/Nwuli/Grant/Denis
This year so far we have:
Ware
I'm not sure how much credibility we can give that report stating it's up by 65%. It's a fun read and interesting data but they're basing that off of 30 teams that use their program.
Exactly. There’s no exact math source out there you can use. But going back to Hines - I’ll say it again… We’re talking about a player who only played 18 mpg on a team that didn’t make the tournament. Not even a double digit scorer or rebounder. And he’s going to cost more than our entire budget from last year. So no, it doesn’t feel like we are in a new situation where we now “have money to burn”.
Clearly not. Sure - it would’ve been nice to add a PG but once you see that an average (not even good but just servicable) starting frontcourt is going to cost more than half your damn budget, you abandon ship and pivot until you figure out your interior situation. Not only don’t we have starters at the 4 or 5, but we also failed to retain anyone who could even be a candidate to log frontcourt minutes at back up (Dortch, Nwuli, Grant, etc.)
Yet it still seems the only players RU is popping up as reaching out to are guards and Maker who might not even be better than Fall.
Someone who knows more, answer me this: Can we afford a PF and a Center from a P5 conference who have shown good ability but have been buried on the bench and look like they will again (only getting 10 mins per game) PLUS a guard who would mildly improve us at PG, SG, and SF?
Where did that number come from for Hines? The center that Miami got is a better prospect and Richie got confirmation that they paid "between $2.5-$3.0M".
There was a link to a couple articles stating that was what he was asking. He started at 3M and it went up.
Not that it’s be all end all but ESPN has published list of top 75 portal targets according to them and enough of them are already signed that it’s alarming to me we’re not even hearing any buzz or chatter that Rutgers is attached to even ONE notable player
Well he can ask all he wants but I would be shocked if he gets anything close to that.
I know there’s still time to reel in some quality bigs, but it would have been nice if RU made a splash right out of the gate, even if we had to overpay.
Getting one sought-after big right away would have announced to the world and to other high level prospects that we are serious about building a contender for next year.
Instead, our first move was to bring in a total unknown. He may turn out to be a good player for us, and I hope he is, but the optics aren’t helping us to land other high quality guys.
Getting one sought-after big right away would have announced to the world and to other high level prospects that we are serious about building a contender for next year.
Instead, our first move was to bring in a total unknown. He may turn out to be a good player for us, and I hope he is, but the optics aren’t helping us to land other high quality guys.
This is a good point especially when you’re trying to build from ground up again basically you have to give players a reason to listen
Syracuse for example McNamara brought 2 best guys with him from Siena but is filling his roster quickly and yes maybe over paying but he’s creating excitement within program
The hardcore fans on the board here are at best confused by what we’ve done so far so imagine what casual fans would say
This.
The time for "overpaying on a center" was before spending money on Ware, Mark, Davis, and presumably Powers and Buchanon.
And definitely before bringing in Duarte.
If you overpay at the top, then you have to underpay at the bottom.
We've already paid at the bottom.
Do we even have money left to overpay (if Pike even wanted to)?
If we "overpay" for a center at this point then we'll be underpaying for the other 2-3 new starters we also need.
Yep, the whole approach and order of doing things by Pike and GM Sullivan is Bass Ackwards in my opinion.
They can spend $5.5-$6.0M on a C, 4, wing, and backup C. Thats enough to bring in some good talent. Whether or not they do it is another question.
They should be spending like Louisville to make a splash and get top guys right now…come out showing that you are serious rather than taking a guy no one had on a radar and people(all of us) questioning what they are doing
you hired a GM for that? I could have been in that position and gone to watch intramurals and picked up a player there instead
you hired a GM for that? I could have been in that position and gone to watch intramurals and picked up a player there instead
Agree with most of this - although as I’ve told you before, 4 clear starters was never realistically in our budget regardless and 3 was a reach. It was always going to be be more like 2.5 and now we have to hope 2 is still in the cards and both of them are frontcourt players. We shouldn’t even have another conversation with another guard until we sign a center and a PF but you know our next addition will be another guard. Because as you noted - we work *** backwards.
The one positive about the backcourt situation is unlike last year, at least the floor is known, and there are a variety of different paths that could lead to varying degrees of improvement. Either or both of the frosh could make strides over the offseason. TF will have another year under his belt in the system and playing alongside better frontcourt options (hopefully) might help him. J Mike has shown modest improvement each year. Unlike last year where we needed every single thing to go right to avoid being Eddie Jordan bad, this year, each of the above that goes right wpuld result in an improved backcourt (maybe not as much as we had hoped for, but still better - even if only one of those things happens).
But to even debate the possibilities above - we need to have a better forward than Grant and a better center than Ogbole on the roster when the dust settles, and we need a plan for how to fill the gap when both of these pieces aren’t in the game together. Unfortunately, based on how the roster is constructed, our 3rd “overpriced” addition also probably needs to be a frontcourt player because at the moment we don’t have anyone at all to put in the game at the 4 or 5 other than sliding Buchanan over.
Its a combo of things
This reality is the past 3 seasons Rutgers is a bottom 10 program ...add in being bottom 1/3 NIL, the rep hit Rutgers took with Dylan/Ace. Pike lost any stain and the unavoidable reality that Pikes just doesnt possess the ability to navigate the new NIL reality
We arent in with any top 100 or maybe even 150 because there are better options elsewhere
The perception problem is difficult for Rutgers to overcome.The mens basketball program went 30 years without one NCAA bid.This lack of success has clearly impacted recruiting before and after NIL.In the B1G Ten MAC level recruits//tramsfers will result in the bottom of league rankings.The addition of the four west coast teams just makes it far morer difficult to have any relevancy in the B1G Ten.The only way out of this mediocrioty mode is to come up with the money to hire a Pitino type head coach similar to when Stringer came to Rutgers and made the womens team a natioal power.The days of player development are over with the NIL and the transfer portal.Sadly,I don't see future success as likely.
IDK, wasn't Mighty in the top 60 and we offered him just over half his worth? We were in the conversation til that.
Who knows but this is interesting.
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Yet somehow we had fans who thought it would be realistic for Pike to purchase an entire new roster from scratch. That was never in the cards. Sullivan’s job was to predict FMV so that we could offer enough above it for a frontcourt player that someone would bite. And then again for an encore. From there, any left over money after filling out the roster with retention could go towards a 3rd impact player.
Mind you - not everyone agreed on the exact logistics of how many we could afford but nearly everyone thought we’d start with center instead were shopping for the deep reserves first it seems. Only at RU.
Help me understand how DePaul has their new center locked up?
It’s definitely that. But it doesn’t mean it will end well or end poorly. The point is we have zero information and everyone is panicking. I lean towards it ending on the negative side but I have no idea, just like everyone else.
Who knows but this is interesting.
Sure - but Buchanan is our only player over 6-5 and he’s not really 6-7 either. Teams like Vandy have 3+ 6-7 forwards logging big minutes. I’d welcome the addition of a pair of 6-7 forwards but we would still need one bigger player on the team whose at least as good as Ogbole. I don’t think Maker is and if Ware was he would’ve played.