One guy, best guy on the team, takes a lot of midrange shots that impress NBA front offices but are not strategically sound for today's college game Other guy, also best on team, takes over the game 10% of the time. Incontestable, but only 10% of the time. His downhill game is spectacular and other than clear out does not rely on teammates or coach's scheme. We can not pick and roll because we can't pick (offensive foul away from the basket is a triple negative on my sheet) and we can't effectively covert the roll. Takes time and polish to pull these off and that degree of skill is obsolete. We have promising athletes instead of crafty ballers. They block shots but they don't double in the corner.
These two guys, are only months away from high school. Before they got here, their selection in the NBA draft was already a given. How much a player is going to listen to a one-year-only head coach (much less assistants) in these circumstances is going to be limited. You don't know the number of people outside the program talking in these kids' ears. Their primary interest is in displaying their talent and not learning fundamental aspects of the college team game played at a higher/highest level. I've said it before and I'll say it again, taking tough shots is not how you win basketball games.
Rutgers is not alone in the main complaint on transfers. Either they were on a team for 3 years and can't let go of their mid-tier coaching or they've been to 3 schools in 3 years and have never seen the benefit of really buying-in and listening to a coach to be a role player. Trust me, even walk-ons see themselves as superstars that just need to right circumstance to go supernova. Coaching this mindset to understand something like a switching scheme, takes more than a few weeks of summer practice.
Pike is a point guard turned coach. His level of complexity might not hold up in the era of one-and-dones and the transfer portal. In the guns for hire age, there is only so much you can do. Geo Baker is not walking through that door again. The job has changed since Pikes arrived. He is very intelligent and will make the adjustments. I bet he learned a lot this year...but at a tremendous foregone cost.
Martini is probably a smart kid, Princeton educated...on offense and defense half the time it looks like he is lost out there. Sommerville is out of position so much it's part of his playing style. Out of position is why we give up easy baskets and get clobbered on the board. It's position and using your fat ass to box out. I'm not seeing that. Latham is my favorite player on this team and he is going to have to go to summer school to unlearn a lot of what he learned this year.
J. Will, Acuff, Derkack, Davis are all probably not quite good enough for the B1G. A good game here or there but mostly out of control, not integrating in the offense or defense. They are the second, third, fourth and fifth reincarnation of Calvin Wooten. If just one of them had a breakout, we'd be looking at a much better result. That 4 rolls of the dice that crapped out. Bad luck is not bad coaching. (Of course that is the motto losers use too.)
College basketball used to be a coach's game. Why do you think K and Jay Wright gave it up? The current product depends a lot less on coaching, more on motivation and stripping down to a level of simplicity that makes everyone more comfortable. In the NCAA's I bet we see some teams outside the P5 that have unheralded seniors that played together for 4 years, make the glamorous teams look silly, because the old model was better.
