Pike didn’t manage the situation well. In fact, he gets an F. That said, the “situation” last year causing the failure is completely unrelated to the future or past of Pike’s tenure (aka - having a team adopt a religion of sorts where 2 star players should be options 1 and 2 with a clear goal of getting them the ball doesn’t always work out). I see it fail all the time at the youth level. Sometimes it’s actually counter productive to have other proven (but inferior iso players). I know that sounds crazy but certain types of kids quietly excel at being complements to good players. We only sought out one kid like that in Martini and he didn’t have a true position at the BIg level. Thats why we failed.
We don’t run great offense but Cam Spencer got his points as a shooter playing for Pike. I don’t think it’s out of the question that Zrno could supply his 13 ppg. And actually - I also feel pretty good about the chance of Buchanan being more productive on offense than anyone on that 2022-23 team was other than Cam and Cliff. I love Caleb - but he wasn’t scoring 15.6 ppg ever (and certainly not as a frosh) in the A-10 and nowhere near Buchanan’s efficiency level that frosh season. FWIW - Caleb only broke 15 points in a game 8 times in 5 seasons.
So when you start looking at it this way, things don’t seem so bad… We have Cliff’s offense (13 ppg) to make up - but Dean and Wolf added next to nothing there (17 ppg across all 3). If Ogbole and Fall can each give us 6-7 and Ware or Dortch give us 2-4 in scrap minutes at the 5 we’d be right there.
Going down the line - it’s realistic to think J-Mike can replace Derek’s offense on that team. When you look at the rest of that team’s offense it was Paul (not really a scorer), Mag (part of the season only) and Hyatt (who didn’t have a good year at all). Among Grant, the frosh, Bryce and whoever we bring in with our last scholly - if we can match that offense and be good on D, we may not be as bad as everyone expects.
