On the board there has been lot of criticism of certain players. Dylan Grant is one of them. No one can deny that he did not perform up to expectations. That being said, we have several millions of dollars of coaching salaries being expended annually to help players. Clearly, the blame should be put on the coaches rather than the players. If it were just one player who did not perform, too small a sample size. But most of the roster…
Somewhat unfair
- Thread starter RU677381
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Not to mention we vilify guys who leave that we want to retain but **** on the guys we don't like when they leave. We expect loyalty and offer none.
I may agree with your points about coaching, but there also needs to be accountability towards Grant as a player and an individual. He played incredibly soft at times last year and lacked effort at times on the floor. He either needs to increase the speed of his motor at wherever he lands next, or maybe that’s as fast as his motor goes, but man he just looked lackadaisical too many times while on the floor. Not diminishing your coaching points, you are right, but effort and toughness is in many cases an innate quality of an individual, it may be one that Grant lacks. I think the criticism is more towards how disinterested/overmatched he looked at times, especially in Big 10 play and not the early season cupcake games.
Absolutely- I used to be in the camp of “not criticizing the kids” - but f’ that now. They are paid professionals - and many make a hell of a lot more $$ than most of us make. So - if they deserve criticism- like grant - we’ll so be it.
To the few posts saying - put the blame on the coaches not the players- i ask… do you read this board? There have been COUNTLESS posts/ threads criticizing pike and his staff. Wtf are you even talking about
lastly - re: “not to mention we vilify guys who leave that we want to retain but **** on the guys we don't like when they leave. We expect loyalty and offer none.” Show me a fanbase in any sport, at any time in history, that doesn’t do the same thing.
The coaches are to blame for recruiting misses. Pike has to own that with Grant, but I’m not sure where the OP is getting that Pike is responsible for failing to develop him (I.e. why is it assumed that he has the talent but we just couldn’t tap into it?)
He’s a fairly smart offensive player who reacts well on the offensive glass and can get some tip ins (especially against smaller teams). Moves pretty well without the ball. At no point at Rutgers did he demonstrate high major potential in any other attribute of the game. He was wrongly labeled our go to star after last season based on lack of any other returners who saw meaningful playing time. Bottom line is he didn’t pan out.
He’s a fairly smart offensive player who reacts well on the offensive glass and can get some tip ins (especially against smaller teams). Moves pretty well without the ball. At no point at Rutgers did he demonstrate high major potential in any other attribute of the game. He was wrongly labeled our go to star after last season based on lack of any other returners who saw meaningful playing time. Bottom line is he didn’t pan out.
I think you may be conflating different issues. Rutgers only returned 4 players this past season (Dortch, Davis, Grant, Og). Only Grant's performance dropped. The other 3 performed better than the previous season (on an individual basis). The problem with the team has not been the development of players -rather it has been the intake / recruitment of adequate talent to compete in the BIG coupled with a significantly heavy reliance on Freshman the past 2 seasons.
He was the only player on the team that often looked like he didn’t care and was checked out and going through the motions. In my opinion that’s not how you find a new team with more $ and playing time.
The minute they decided they wanted to be paid professionals all bets were off. You want to get paid, then you get everything that comes with it. These aren't student athletes, they're paid mercenaries. Coaches well, they've always been on the hit list for everyone except Al. Hell, he even still thinks Ash deserved another season.
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Pre NIL this would be a fair take. Now, its just stupid. These are paid professionals. If your doctor tried hard but screwed up while seeing you, would you be making the same excuses?
Yup and it’s not even just that. You have to think about keeping the kids in terms of the money and your budget. When no money was involved, there would be no way I would want Grant to leave. It’s just that from a practical standpoint, we can’t cut his salary and he’s both worth what he’s making.
If the coaching staff is going to rely on the "developmental team" moniker, then they should be expected to be above average in developing players into B1G contributors.
The opposite is happening it seems.
For example, Coach Cal never claimed to be some great developer of players.
I would hold him less responsible for players not developing year over year.
The reliance on freshman has been a result of the "upperclassmen" not developing and transfer out to lower level programs.
Dortch and Grant aren't being poached by UConn after 2 years of development under Pike.
Been a fan of RU sports since my freshman year, 50 years ago. In all that time I’ve been supportive of our players — criticizing them at times but always respecting the fact that they were student athletes representing my Alma Mater.
Pay-for-play (can’t really describe it as NIL anymore) has created a me-first environment for the players, where loyalty to our school (and by extension to us as fans) is out the window. I’m not blaming them for taking advantage of the system we’re in now, but I have no qualms about calling them out when they appear to be giving less than full effort.
I wish Grant well, and I hope whatever was bothering him this past season, whether physical or psychological, will get worked out so that he will be happy and productive somewhere else.
Pay-for-play (can’t really describe it as NIL anymore) has created a me-first environment for the players, where loyalty to our school (and by extension to us as fans) is out the window. I’m not blaming them for taking advantage of the system we’re in now, but I have no qualms about calling them out when they appear to be giving less than full effort.
I wish Grant well, and I hope whatever was bothering him this past season, whether physical or psychological, will get worked out so that he will be happy and productive somewhere else.
I think most of the guys who stayed did get better. Grant was the lone exception honestly. And as Sean suggested, part of it was that he was simply overhyped last year.
Dortch improved from his frosh season. J Mike is a much better shooter and decision maker now than as a frosh. Ogbole also improved a lot from when he started. The issue was more that all their starting points were low to begin with.
Oh I’m not defending Grant not panning out for us, but even the best developer can’t make a high major star out of a player who simply lacks BIG level talent. In my opinion, that’s the reality with Grant. He’s able to execute against smaller lower level players so there will be lots of noise next season the same way there was with Wolf this season.
I’ll caveat and say he wouldn’t be a high major liability to a good team per se on offense because he’s good at movement and rotations. When he’s wide open under the basket he can score - which we saw when the focus was on Ace and Harper. That said - he is a liability on defense for sure and any team who is able to afford / land players like Ace and Harper going forward will be able to obtain other players who can do everything Grant did, shoot better than his career 28% from deep and play better D. So there’s no scenerio where I see him belonging right now at the high level and it wouldn’t have mattered who coached him. He has no post up moves, no handling skills, and isn’t a good shooter. Those things are individual skills aligned with talent - not the coaching.
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