Rutgers favored tonight

[RU72]

By 5.5.Would seem to indicate Caleb will play.

 

[RU84]

By 5.5.Would seem to indicate Caleb will play.

Agree, hard to believe we'd be favored without him. Mulcahy?

 

[Greene Rice FIG]

I wouldn’t read too much in to the line. The perceived (and actually) benefit of Caleb being back in game 1 vs. Temple wouldn’t be that great.

In the middle of the B1G season with Caleb back playing is a different story.

 

[jordkap]

I wouldn’t read too much in to the line. The perceived (and actually) benefit of Caleb being back in game 1 vs. Temple wouldn’t be that great.

In the middle of the B1G season with Caleb back playing is a different story.

It depends… if we only need him to give us 15 minutes, shouldn’t be an issue

 

[GORU2014]

I might be too optimistic but I feel like we should be favored even without Paul and Caleb. We can still score and defend with Simpson/Spencer/Mag/Hyatt/Cliff and Miller/Reiber/Woolfolk off the bench.

 

[Luvscarletknights]

They have one main scorer. D should be able to neutralize him.

 

[Scangg]

Agree, hard to believe we'd be favored without him. Mulcahy?

We should be favored without Paul and Caleb

Temple lost to 2 bad teams already. Some are trying to make Temple out to be a juggernaut or something

Can we lose? Sure. Look at all the upsets already all over the country and our struggles last year. We are still the better team, even without Paul and Caleb

Pike has had almost a full week to prepare for Temple. That isn't going to go well for them. The team is rested and ready to go. Simpson will get us moving up and down the court for easy transition buckets. Miller and Mag can shut down Dunn

Don't forget Temple has internal issues with Battle getting benched. They could be on the verge of imploding while Rutgers team chemistry appears to be elite so far

 

[bowlgoal]

I see 4.5 now

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

I wouldn’t read too much in to the line. The perceived (and actually) benefit of Caleb being back in game 1 vs. Temple wouldn’t be that great.

In the middle of the B1G season with Caleb back playing is a different story.

We don’t know Caleb’s situation at all. This isn’t necessarily the same recovery trajectory as battling back from a lingering back injury.

A version of Caleb that’s anything close to the one that ended last season (not just the ND game) provides an immediate upgrade no matter who we play. Besides being the returning conf DPOY (our best defensive player) it’s not like you can really say we’d be compromising offense by playing him over 5 other guys. His numbers right now would rank 5th on the team in ppg (and amongst guys playing meaningful minutes his shooting percentage - while not great - would still rank him 4th). He’s a better ball handler than all but 3 other core rotation players on the team (and it’s debatable whether Simpson / Spencer will be better than him against elevated competition). He’d rank 3rd on the team right now in assists per game. And that’s not even accounting for the fact that Caleb’s stats came against a much tougher level average opponent.