no brainer.. not rooting for the Philly Pigeons... so hoping KC makes it 3 in row.
..but for Pacheco being injured and not used like he was in the past, think they will move on and avoid paying him more in future. That being said, I hope he winds up with the GIANTS and bring the prodigal son home to NJ. Can always hope, right?

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Ace had 0 blocks, 2 defensive rebounds and 0 assists and missed 13 straight shots. You are an optimist and saying he had a good game.

Greene Rice FIG said:

RuChoppin,

Are you really rejecting that playing with 2 18 year olds that will be looking to put their numbers for the NBA draft wouldn't make a 22 year old look for a different option?

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Is this really the player you want:

“I don’t want to play with potential great players. I want to play with less talented players so I can do my own thing and get my own shots and numbers.”

That’s the argument you are making by targeting play don’t want to play along side potentially great players.

Why did Clif go to Alabama? To win.
He reportedly had better offers.
You don’t want players who want to win?

Sorry but “better players” generally correlates to “more winning”.

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Greene Rice FIG said:

RuChoppin,

Are you really rejecting that playing with 2 18 year olds that will be looking to put their numbers for the NBA draft wouldn't make a 22 year old look for a different option?

Click to expand...

I'm rejecting that we'd have been able to afford a B1G-level impact 22 year old at all (let alone two of them), with even less non-Harper/Bailey NIL money.

You're talking about dropping our 2 most talented players, replacing them with 2 random HS freshmen, and hoping that we'd be able to trade two of our current portal transfers for two others.... who would be net/net better than having Bailey/Harper on the team. None of this improves retention, or chemistry, or helps get everyone playing Pikiell-style defense.... it just swaps two freshman superstars for "two portal players in our budget".

Also, Bailey was our first commit for the 2024 class (Jan 2023). There's no telling whether we'd have even gotten Sommerville (Apr 2023), Dorch (Jun 2023), or Grant (Aug 2023) without that domino falling first.

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I think the thread quality of the softer t shirt and sweatshirts is just better on these sites here as well as the logos and designs....problem is especially with the latter link, not much in red

RUChoppin said:

JWill and AWill were desperation moves after Spencer/Mulcahy bailed late, well after the undergrad portal had closed. JWill was a huge risk, since we didn't even know if he'd be eligible for 2023-24 without a waiver, had the betting issue looming over his head, and was coming off a torn achilles tendon - but there were slim pickens in the portal at that point, and we had a massive hole blown through our roster after we'd thought it was largely set.

Click to expand...

JWill and AWill were risks that didn’t pan out

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RUChoppin said:

Also, just as an aside, NIL should have nothing to do with collectives pulling small contributions from fans. The whole point of "Name, Image, and Likeness rights" are that someone is being paid for use of their NIL for advertising or selling a product in some way. A collective begging fans to chip in nickels so that they can somehow funnel that money to players under the guise of "appearance" money or whatever, is a warped contortion of what NIL is supposed to be.

Now, I know the horse is out of the barn at this point, and NIL is just a euphemism for "let fans pay player salaries"... but the average fan is negatively impacted by $30 parking, and they can't be relied on to foot the bill for millions in player payouts.

/soapbox

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It’s pay to play and always has been pay to play.
NIL is BS.

Before these payments happened under the table, which is why UConn has gotten so good at raising resources. Now everything is out in the open, so we either pony up or don’t.

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RuChoppin,

Are you really rejecting that playing with 2 18 year olds that will be looking to put their numbers for the NBA draft wouldn't make a 22 year old look for a different option?

The RUT said:

You're trying to make a national championship level NIL argument for a team that isn't even sniffing the dance.

You don't need a massive NIL budget to be an average B1G team. You might need a massive NIL budget to win the NCAA Tournament, but literally no one on this forum cares about a national championship right now, we just want to freaking dance on a semi-consistent basis.

No one needs Hurley or Urban Meyer coaching Rutgers. Couldn't care less about being at that level. I'm asking for respectability and having a respected athletic department.

You're advocating throwing money at a problem that's very clearly not going to be solved by money.

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You aim for a Championship and at the least you dance every year. We don’t have the resources for a massive NIL budget, but we at least need an adequate NIL budget. We clearly don’t have that when we rolled the dice on Martini, Acuff, Hayes, and Dercack.

Not throwing money at the problem, merely asking for adequate resources to succeed.

RU_SAM said:

Hard to argue for more NIL when we have two of the best players money can buy and are still garbage. There seems to be much larger issues at play that money won’t solve.

Would you continue to invest with a financial advisor that continues to perform below their peers? We’re dealing with a similar paradigm here.

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Get out of here. You didn’t invest anything, so talking about continuing to invest is 8 jokes in one. What we’re dealing with is most of our fans don’t do anything, but run their mouth on the messageboard. This is primarily why our roster is very weak outside the two draft picks.

However our peers are investing. MSUs players are paid a good amount, so this puts us at a competitive disadvantage.

It’s a whole new ball game. We either support, or live with mediocrity or worse. It’s a binary decision.

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All the three point lines at the Garden did he him no favors. Another reason silly playing there. Thought he was a foot or two out of his range every time.

That’s a big man and looks trim. Will be interesting to see where he gets drafted.

GO RU

For the Akron game, they didn't have concessions opened in the upper level.

1/27
Michigan
Ohio State
USC

1/28
Michigan State

RUChoppin said:

In no universe would we have been better off without Bailey/Harper. That's silly, and "bargaining phase" talk.

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We are 10-10 with the exact same record as last year and we are 126th in defense. Our program culture has been completely thrown out the window. We aren't making the NCAA tournament.

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