Way too early top 25
- Thread starter RU677381
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Men's Bracketology: No one talks about Houston and a title ... they should
Houston's only losses have come at Kansas, Iowa State and TCU -- all NCAA tournament teams. They are No. 1 in the NET, No. 1 in KenPom and a clear-cut No. 1 seed.
www.espn.com
Rutgers best defensive player has graduated and the offense was woeful last season .Griffiths must be a double digit scorer along with a transfer portal point guard in order for Rutgers to be a top 25 team.
Our best defensive player was a not-insignificant reason why the offseason was woeful.
Replacing McConnell with Griffiths by itself moves you up the chart offensively like 25 spots.
I think it's even more because everything changes and we had one of the worst offenses among high majors.
If you only swap the two players and keep all else constant, it's a significant difference, if you make other changes to take advantage of your player's strengths - which I think/hope Pike is really good at - then it's an even bigger improvement.
You're not looking at the entire picture. If Griffiths can score like we think he can, then it changes everything. We become harder to guard, and teams have to respect that possibility. If Pike adds another transfer similar to Cam, why not?
Defense will always be Pike's calling card. Losing McConnell is a big blow to the defense, but what Pike teaches defense, I suspect the defense will not fall off a cliff. On the flip side, adding someone like Griffiths instantly makes the offense a bigger threat. As I said above, if Pike adds another impact player (transfer portal) like Cam, we jump many schools because the combined results of the defense and offense take Rutgers to another level. Rutgers has accomplished a lot strictly by the defense alone.
Don’t forget we get MaG back and he will be a contender for B1G 10 DPOY. PLUS before his injury he was becoming more of an offensive threat.
Mag = if back 100% healthy, has chance to contend for DPOY
Cliff = if back, also has chance to contend for DPOY (he improved so much on defense towards mid to end of the season)
Wolf = Expect him to have HUGE improvement next year after 1 year of concentrating on BasketBall only.
Simpson = shown flashes of being great. If he improves his ball handling skills (which we can expect) will be huge improvement than his playing (end of the season - which was still great)
Cam = 1 year of B1G under his belt, expect him to get more shots off, instead of inconsistency
Gavin = If he lives upto people's expentency, he will be great contributor at both ends of the floor
Paul = If he is willing to take back seat and be more of roll player, he is going to give us great veteran leadership on and off the floor. He will be the Glue guy that can contribute all different ways.
NDongo = huge athleticism, that really contribute especially on defensive side of the ball with huge wingspan
JaMichael = seems to be very controlled player who wont make stupid mistakes. can give us few minutes here and there
all this before picking up transfer PG (hopefully), which will really balance out our offense.
Top 25 team in order...
I am extremely impressed with what Lunardi did. Some of his mid-major seeding analysis is spot on. He didn't fall into a St John's trap by making them a tourney team with only Soriano on the existing roster. He didn't jump full tilt buggy onto the Duke hyped wagon and actually made them a 3 seed. He recognized that as of today the Big Ten will be down and only hyped Michigan State and Purdue. Michigan State is spot on. And we know that the Big Ten will get 8 slots and someone has to fill in the 7-11 slots. Rutgers is most certainly a top 5 Big Ten team with all that returns,so the ranking and slotting is fully justified by working backwards.
