Woolfolk, Griffiths & Chol
- Thread starter Bob Chaewsky_rivals
- Start date
Overall, definitely. But Chol isn’t an upgrade over Grant or Buchanan.
Those three plus Simpson and Powers and Francis as the first 6 in would boatrace your current three and JMiss, also with Powers and Francis as the first 6 in the game.
Pike did a marvelous job downgrading talent over a three year period with two studs on the team in-between.
Those three plus Simpson and Powers and Francis as the first 6 in would boatrace your current three and JMiss, also with Powers and Francis as the first 6 in the game.
Pike did a marvelous job downgrading talent over a three year period with two studs on the team in-between.
I mean, I don’t think these are the right comparatives to question. The players you mentioned on our current team would still be here if Pike hadn’t misstepped.
1) Getting rid of Wolf was just plain stupid. We didn’t replace him, and went into 2024-25 with Ogbole’s 3-4 games as our only D1 experience at the center position. There was no excuse for that mistake. We left the position totally vacant.
2) You could easily argue in hindsight that replacing Chol with senior PJ who also played no defense and almost certainly cost more, was a bad decision on our part. If we were going to add someone who played no D, may as well go with the kid with more eligibility for development who was cheaper.
3) GG, I’m simply not seeing as this huge mistake we made. Buchanan averaged over 15 ppg when healthy as a frosh in the A-10. I don’t see GG’s 11 ppg several years removed in the American on a pedestrian Temple team as anything to cry about. Happy for Gavin that he’s found his level.
1) Getting rid of Wolf was just plain stupid. We didn’t replace him, and went into 2024-25 with Ogbole’s 3-4 games as our only D1 experience at the center position. There was no excuse for that mistake. We left the position totally vacant.
2) You could easily argue in hindsight that replacing Chol with senior PJ who also played no defense and almost certainly cost more, was a bad decision on our part. If we were going to add someone who played no D, may as well go with the kid with more eligibility for development who was cheaper.
3) GG, I’m simply not seeing as this huge mistake we made. Buchanan averaged over 15 ppg when healthy as a frosh in the A-10. I don’t see GG’s 11 ppg several years removed in the American on a pedestrian Temple team as anything to cry about. Happy for Gavin that he’s found his level.
Folks are always quick to rush people out of here; “so and so isn’t a B1G player, yadda yadda”…
but then say Steve’s strength is development.
Make it make sense.
but then say Steve’s strength is development.
Make it make sense.
What doesn’t make sense about this? Every team has recruiting misses. Just because a recruit doesn’t pan out doesn’t mean we did a poor job developing them. After 2 years in the program, there have been situations where kids were buried on the depth chart and Pike decided to move on. Just because these kids became productive mid major players by their senior years elsewhere does not mean Pike isn’t good at developing players. He thought, at the time, he had others with more potential than the ones he let go.
Pike is a strong developer on D over all. Kids who struggle with D early usually get better in his system. Grant so far has been an exception - not the rule though sometimes it takes longer. Hyatt’s D got better by his senior season.
I believe Simpson left because he wasn’t going to be PG 1 when Dylan was recruited. He definitely wasn’t shown the door.
Sure, teams want depth. He probably wasn’t shown the door but recognized that Pike took and paid up for Ace Bait not for talent reasons….cutting Simpson’s minutes significantly.
Pike got the star for a year and his awful best friend for four. Obviously the package deal was a total failure.
Anyone is better than Ogbole, the guy should be playing D2 ball. Woolfolk is the only loss in this group but he'd likely be a 6 and 4 type in the B1G instead of a 10 and 5 in the MAC.
Grant is almost 11 and 5 in the B1G while Chol is almost 9 and 3 in the Mountain West, no comparison needed.
Buchanan would make Griffiths cry in a 1v1, maybe even snap him in half...lol.
Why are you even asking this question though? It's not even close even with Ogbole in the equation. There's a reason most of them are at other schools now instead of high major programs.
I listened to Jerry carino’s jersey jump shot podcast this week and he talked about roster construction and brought up that last year’s team would have certainly been better with Derek and Wolf. Transfers brought in were worse when paired with Ace and Dylan. And then wolf and Derek would be seniors this year and would certainly help our team. We can debate whether they are truly B1G players but way better than current roster.
You really have a thing against EO. If nothing else, he rebounds. In conference games there are 28 guys in the conference that average more rebounds per game than EO. NONE of them play less than 5 minutes more per game than he does. The conference leader in rebounding averages 1 rebound less than EO per 40 minutes played. Sure EO isn't a talented basketball player, but you can do worse for a back up center.
For his size, Ogbole is horrible. He is out of position on defense, cannot score at the rim and rebounding and blocks are not great. He is completely lost on the court. Someone with his size should be averaging at least 10 points and 5 rebounds. I know he is new to basketball but that means he should not be playing division 1.
“For his size” is not relevant really. If we let him go, we are in the market for a back up center in addition to a starter. What type of player do you reasonably expect us to land to fill this role? And at what price point? Those are the only considerations and as Sean pointed out m, it’s unlikely we would replace him with someone materially better and almost certainly it would be someone who grabs less boards per minute.
You look at the stat sheet, I’ll continue to assess using his actual game play.
He doesn’t bring much value at all which is why Dortch and Buchanan have been getting a lot of minutes in his place even when not in foul trouble.
We need two bigs from the portal whether people like it or not.
Of course we need them, but we aren't going to get them. EO at least has a single above average trait, rebounding. Dortch, as a center, has none, he's playing purely cause we have none that can guard a 5 out team. He scores even less than EO. While these things don't mean much, EO's player efficiency rating is actually second on the team, tells you how bad some of the talent is.
EO should be brought back as a situational backup. Some games he may play 15 min and others dnp. He has improved this year admittedly from a very low baseline. We need to spend big on a big man and roll with Dortch and EO as backups/situational roles
Your stuck in fictitious candy shop land. We’re not landing two playable big men in the portal. If we did get two, the second one would end up costing up more the EO (Fall probably does) and we’d be lucky if he’d see the floor more than Agee.
We could get two meh bigs and that would be an upgrade to this year’s group. But I’m not expecting them to land a top big either unless they are in the $10-12m range. But I doubt they can get that high.
Define “meh”. If Shaq Doorson had to play as much as Ogbole he’d have similar output. Shaq Carter would probably cost 750k or more in the portal based on his 2018-19 production. And even if we were in ball park, why would a kid like that choose RU unless it was for more playing time as the primary starter (we won’t be much better if that’s what we get as our starter by the way because the D would still be awful).
Even still. Odds are we get another Ware who couldn’t help as a frosh.
Yeah. It’s just crazy to me what some folks think we’re going to pull out of a hat in a back up center. We are NOT getting a Shaq Carter coming off a 4.5 ppg in 14 mpg at Rutgers in 2018-19. A kid with that stat line at a high major does not want to transfer to play back up center at a program coming off a losing season. Not unless we drastically overpay. We’re getting the JUCO version of Shaq Carter and for every one him and frosh centers who contribute there are far more Duke, Agee, Fall, Ware types who are unplayable. Ogbole isn’t good but he’s also not that.
If Manny has another off-season of improvement to match this past year, he will be more than adequate as a backup center in 2026-27.
@RUFAN4LIFE - I’m just curious (since you keep laughing). Which back up center pick up in Rutgers history are you recalling to have materially outplayed the level Ogbole has performed at this season? In my recollection it’s not many other than Cliff and maybe Carter the year he transferred from the JUCO. There’s a long list of guys we’ve brought in and nobody you could make a reasonable argument would’ve helped us more in their first year that Ogbole is this year. If you say Wolf, Shaq D or Reiber, you are clearly not remembering what they were like when they first arrived at Rutgers. Fall, Agee, Duke, etc. didn’t help at all.
You keep trying to fit a square peg into a round hole here. Ogbole should never have been on this roster, it was a desperation move by Pike a few years ago. Even if he had 4 more years he's not going to be a solid contributor. Trying to compare him against past backups is meaningless because the game has also changed a bit. It's time to move on from this guy but you guys want to hold on to him for dear life. That's the last I'm saying here, this is becoming a waste of time now.
You still didn’t answer my question. At the end of the day, someone has to play the 5 spot for 40 minutes and there are only select match ups where we can get by without one (playing Dortch and Buchanan types instead). So if you want to say it’s time to move on, fine, but there has to be a realistic replacement plan.
You say our past Bigs don’t matter because the game changed - what does that mean? Ware is a current player. Fall is a current player too. They are not helping us or taking time from Ogbole this year. Those are our back ups. What makes you think we’ll have more luck convincing “better” back up prospects to come here next season? Let’s hope we prioritize getting a better starting center. If we do, our back up role will be even less attractive though than it was this year (and this year there was hope of beating out Ogbole!)
The problem is the “buried on the depth chart” assessment by Pike.
He appears to be a very poor talent evaluator lately.
None of these younger players haven been developed by Pike and then “poached” via NIL by another program.
The false “Pike is being hurt by the transfer portal. He needs to be able to develop his own players” narrative.
The only person stopping Pike from developing his players has been Pike.
Which would be fine if Pike was an adequate talent evaluator of transfer talent.
But he’s also been poor there.
Derkack, Acuff, JWill, AWill, Fall.
Even Francis on the other end - who Pike had to be convinced to take?
So he’s been bad as moving on from players he didn’t think would develop and bad at replacing them with bad transfers.
I mean - maybe. But he didn’t have much of a chance this past cycle (his own fault) based on the Ace / Dylan disaster. We weren’t going to buy a full portal roster so we had to keep some guys from last season. It’s not like Jordan and Lathan are having great seasons and we “retained the wrong ones”.
I also don’t think it’s realistic for a high major to stick with guys that have a 2-3 year development trajectory so I’m not really sure what point your trying to make. GG didn’t get better at Nebraska. It took Wolf several years to improve to the point where he’s a good player on a mid major. Derek Simpson is doing well at an A-10 school but he’s still not efficient. We have no idea what J Mike’s stats would look like if he transferred down and he’s a full year ahead experience wise. And so on.
They were all desperation moves by Pike.
No one wanted Fall. He was a bust at two other high major programs but he fit the non-existent budget Pike had. Ware can't even crack the lineup with two awful guys in front of him. Says all you need to know.
RU has the worst bigs in the entire country. Clean house and start fresh.
I’ve seen and read interviews with Woolfolk at Miami where he acknowledged that he couldn’t shoot when he came to RU, and in another interview he explained that a reason he chose Miami was because he thought he would get the shooting coaching he needed but didn’t get before. He didn’t mention Pike/RU but we know what he meant.
Ok but that’s who we landed to be our only bigs besides Ogbole. What makes you think this time Pike will land, not just one but two guys better than Ogbole when he couldn’t do it last cycle? Don’t say money because we for sure do not have the money to pay for a seasoned high major back up for any position.
No dude. That’s not true. I’ve been more
optimistic than almost everyone. But the reality is we need to upgrade several things to have a chance to be competitive, and back up center is, at best, like 10th priority on the list. Whether you think so or not, Ogbole isn’t materially worse than most teams’ back up centers and the ones who prioritize stocking up on this position (Washington) are learning that it wasn’t money well spent. The money needs to go to different use. And finding someone who might score an extra bucket or two over Ogbole in 10-12 minutes of back up duties just isn’t that important (aside from the fact that it’s not even a given that person would actually turn out better than him). Your saying - well anyone is better than him. So I’m merely pointing out that we have 2 centers on our roster who failed to beat him out right now.
Do you think Washington would have a different record right now if they had Ogbole on their roster instead of Lathan?
This team needs a center that a) knows where to stand on defense b) can grab a rebound at the peak of th bounce from the rim (not at the player’s hip) c) can occasionally alleviate pressure off other players.
Ogbole is a fine backup. Just being that big is an asset off the bench, and honestly, he’s a better screen setter than Cliff ever was (even if I don’t think he’s ever been trusted to roll and finish). This team doesn’t need a world beating center, it needs the kind of strong body try hard Purdue and Nebraska employ and Penn state has in the past. Someone who has a clue about how to actually play basketball.
I think I’d still prefer Dortch as backup 5 assuming they can add some muscle to him. I’m not sure why Dortch hasn’t gotten stronger or better at shooting in his 2 years, especially since he was effectively a redshirt last season. This staff’s lack of development the last 4 years has been astounding
Ogbole is a fine backup. Just being that big is an asset off the bench, and honestly, he’s a better screen setter than Cliff ever was (even if I don’t think he’s ever been trusted to roll and finish). This team doesn’t need a world beating center, it needs the kind of strong body try hard Purdue and Nebraska employ and Penn state has in the past. Someone who has a clue about how to actually play basketball.
I think I’d still prefer Dortch as backup 5 assuming they can add some muscle to him. I’m not sure why Dortch hasn’t gotten stronger or better at shooting in his 2 years, especially since he was effectively a redshirt last season. This staff’s lack of development the last 4 years has been astounding