The issue this year has to do with 2 big Pike decisions that did not turn out well. First, he decided after he couldn’t get Williams or Carr , both ending up with Kentucky , that he would go into the year without a rim protector. If he thought Igbole would become one then that is malpractice. The amount of cleanup Cliff and Myles before him did when our guards got beat and they did get beat , was over the top in blocking shots or the threat of blocking shots. Now opposing players drive to the hoop like the parting of the Red Sea. Not getting a rim protector to play with Manny and Lathan was a huge huge mistake.
The second major mistake as it turned out , was his reliance on his transfers to make an appreciable difference and riding them early , to see almost all Jordan , Zach , PJ fall flat on their faces. He buried Grant and Dorsch because his reliance on Martini. Zach is a few minutes a night player , 15-20 on the high end , and you can make the argument he cost us the Alabama and Texas A&M games. Dylan and ACE played as well as any player or freshman in the country could have played and we still lost because of a few fundamental possessions. He kept on trotting them out when in December and throughout January and they hardly impacted games. Finally , the supporting cast has played a little better , not great or super impactful , but at least adequate the last 5-6 games.
Then all of a sudden ACE after having one of the best January’s that any BIG 10 player has had , has become passive on both ends of the floor in February and coupled with Dylan ( who had the illness and ankle injury to deal with ) have had 2 inexplicable games back to back causing the Iowa and Oregon losses. Nothing has gone right.
Pike betting on himself that he could get players to play defense when his roster includes , PJ , Acuff , Lathan , Jordan , ACE and Dylan , coupled with JMike and Jeremiah getting worse on defense , never happened. They cannot even stay in front of their own man , their sagging onto the paint when their defender goes thru the lane to the 3 point corner and they leave too much space and cannot recover to get out to the 3 point line Has played out over and over. We give up historic great 3 point shooting games to our opponents , whether they were in slumps ( Indiana and Michigan State and Oregon) or just good at it ( Maryland and Iowa ) .
His rotations 26 games in and playing 11 guys is pure lunacy. Why he subbed at the first timeout yesterday at Oregon , was batshit crazy. He has mismanaged the rotations as bad as any year and made the team have a worse record than it actually is . The lack of Senior or upperclass or any player leadership has not surfaced to help him out and he is just swimming now. It has turned into a hot mess.
I will go to war in the Big 10 with Dylan ACE Lathan Dylan Grant and Jeremiah as your starting 5 that are going to play 30 minutes . You have a fighting chance with those 5 and his last act of coaching for these last 5 games is to get all 5 of them attacking offensively. Pike as their coach has to demand defense from those 5 including Dylan and ACE . We can play with most teams with that 5 and stop with the automatic subbing and steal a minute or two around the timeouts. It is the only chance for these last 5.