Unless Pike surprises me and adds some impactful transfers, going with this level of roster talent next year will not end well for Pike
Building year for basketball because there is no Money
- Thread starter rutgersal
- Start date
The average Joe at other schools pays and gives far more than our average joes.
I just want to point that out to people.
Its both. The school does a piss poor job with their avatar of who they want as a student/alum and the alums they attract do not feel enough attraction to the school to give back.
Just today on their IG they feature a girl with purple hair and a bull ring in her nose.
Brilliant job PR team, thats the message you want the general public to see?
Yes he is. But the thing is, if you swap out Ace for Mag, Harper for Derek and Buchanan for PJ our 2024-25 team presses at least 15-20 mpg and probably wins more games than we did. Do we make the tourney? Still probably not but we come a lot closer because the D would’ve been competitive, and the offense probably doesn’t turn out as bad as everyone would think.
I think if you make the changes you listed above we finish dead last in conference. You can press all you want, at some point the ball has to go in the hoop.
Why can't Rutgers find a whale? There must be some very rich RU alumni. Don't any of them like men's college basketball and want to support it?
This all falls apart if your building blocks transfer after their freshmen year
Your thinking doesn't take this into account
The only way to build, is to buy, and buy again
And we are not able to do that effectively
The better the player is, the more likely they get poached, unless you get a whale with millions to retain them
This.
Maybe it's a college atheltics (non-professional sports) fan thing.
This is what the "development!" people are missing.
Every year is a nee roster reconstruction:
Freshman, returning players, transfers
It's not just roster spots anymore.
It's also a percentage of limited funds.
The staff will have to evaluate every position and roster spot and see how much they want to spend.
You can't just sink 50% of your budget on low impact "freshman" hoping to get some benefit in the future.
It's about why they can do today - this year.
We will be developing kids for other programs. That’s how this works now
The thinking incorporates that we will have donors step up after they understand how the game is played. There’s no way around people stepping up. And if they don’t, we’ll just have to replace with another freshman, just like we are likely to do for this year.
What good is saying buy, buy again if it is not feasible to do so? It’s a waste of time.
True. That’s why I said we have to do our best to keep them, knowing that won’t be possible in all cases.
What good is saying "incorporates that we will have donors step up" if it is not feasible to do so?
It's a waste of time.
It’s not a waste of time because more donors stepped up this year than last, so we’re on an upward trajectory with regards to donations. Just have to increase the slope of our NIL Curve.
Why would anyone waste $$$ this year on a 10 win team
^^^^^ One of the dumbest posts in recent years.
You = Dumb
:)
But seriously, you are correct on the whales. RU will not be competitive until we harpoon a whale or two. It won't be by begging and pleading with alumni for a few extra bucks.
+1
Schiano's main job isn't recruiting anymore, it's fundraising to increase the payroll.
Yea I really don’t know what I was doing. I was torn and didn’t know I was wrong until I tried one way.
I don't think we can compete without a whale or two
At this point in time I don't see any way for RU to compete in basketball, next year and beyond
I would pull the remaining NIL money and give it to football (or a lesser sport that would turn RU into a national contender).
#cantwindonttry
One of RU's rich alumni has Nick Saban as a luxury car dealership partner.
That is really saying something given the topic and the author
You're removing nearly 40ppg (Ace/Dylan) from a bad offense and replacing it with maybe 20ppg at best?
I think people are severely overestimating how mediocre the offense was this year compared to the rest of the Big Ten.
"Best offense under Pike" doesn't really mean anything.
The offense wasn't good this year.
No - it didn’t. And what your saying as a general statement isn’t even true. The reality is, Pike has work to do to reframe the narrative around what his program is about. Money matters - but it’s not everything. We’re hearing that we’ve been the top bidder on some players and still haven’t landed them. Losing with 2 lottery picks on the team looks worse perception wise than losing without them does for a coach. but my theory is - Pike is simply better at coaching the defense focused kids.
RU is an academic school. We are not a basketball or a football school
What a dumb ****ing comment. Go back under your rock. Surprised you even know what Instagram is. Spend your time giving Zuckeroidberg your time and money
It’s 37 points combined. I don’t want to come off the wrong way and make it seem like I’m saying they aren’t great offensive players. It’s not that. They each averaged between 14 and 15 shot attempts per game in a system where the blueprint was simply to get them the ball every possession. Nobody else on the team attempted more than 5.5 shots per game. Think about that.
Take J-Mike as an example. He attempted 4 shots a game on average. Let’s say he attempted 8 more two pointers and 3 more three pointers a game and shot at his same percentages. He’d have 14 ppg in that case. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not the guy I want taking the bulk of our shots. The point I’m trying to make is when you put out the number 37 points to make up, you also have to remember the context that someone else would be getting the opportunity to attempt those shots. Even the 2023-24 team (298th ranked offense) shot 28.7% from 3 and 38.9% from the floor overall would statistically combine for over 25 points on those 29 opportunities I believe using their percentages. So if our offense is as bad as that offense I’d estimate we have to overcome 12 points (not 37 as you made it out to be) with D. Hopefully our offense can be a bit better than 298th though simply by finishing fast break opportunities better than that team did. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.
Yes, Pike will reframe the program to be more defensively oriented, but you need the players, in order to be able to do what he wants. Whether we came in 2nd place, 3rd place, or 4th place doesn’t matter because we desperately need bodies, especially at Center and we are struggling to fill our roster. It’s a week before the end of April, and we still need a Center and combo guard. You look at the roster, and you can immediately see that this team is going to have a problem scoring.
I’m praying for a commitment from the freshman Center, who is visiting, because we could sure use a win.
In contrast, Maryland filled their roster in what seems like a blink of an eye, because they have money.
It's true that the offense was mediocre (not bad, mediocre) this year but "removing 40ppg" is a silly way to put it. You're also removing over 43% of the shots taken. PPG do not make sense in a vacuum; if you removed Ace and Dylan from this year's team they would've been terrible but they obviously wouldn't have scored anything close to 40 fewer points per game - it would've been more like 10.
I will say:
I have less than zero interest in directly paying the salaries of professional Rutgers basketball players. It's an absurd system and the sooner they just get paid by the schools the better.
I have less than zero interest in directly paying the salaries of professional Rutgers basketball players. It's an absurd system and the sooner they just get paid by the schools the better.
It’s not entirely money because we’ve been the highest bidder and still weren’t chosen. Right now Rutgers is really not an easy sell for an up and coming offense oriented player. We can’t afford the ones at the high major level and the ones with the best paper numbers from decent mid-majors don’t want to go near Rutgers because of what happened last season. And honestly - we don’t usually attract the Cam Spencer types anyway. We can draw the Geo, Ron, Caleb types again though. What needs to happen for us in an ideal scenerio is Buchanan picks up where he left off as a frosh. He’s a kid who would’ve gone for $1.4 M with his frosh stats only.
Look - nobody expected the 2019-20 team to break through. We were coming off a 14-17 season where we closed out on a bleak 3 game losing streak. Our leading scorer from the 2018-19 team transferred out in the off season. Geo was our only returning double digit scorer. We added Yeboah, yes, but under no circumstances did his stats stand out over Buchanan’s who we are now adding. We added J Young, but again, he was only a role player at Texas. There’s still hope we will add a few more experienced players. What happened was - Ron, MJ and Caleb got better and we broke through. Maybe we will see the same thing to an extent with J Mike, Dortch and Grant. Even Ogbole. It’s not a slam dunk we’re going to be awful.
Francis is the only major long shot I see, simply because his team was just so bad and I feel that any power conference level guard would be able to single-handedly do enough to carry an Amer East team to more than 5 D1 wins.
Yeah - I calculated 12 by plugging in the assumed percentages from our awful 2023-24 team (2 pointers and 3s). But let’s hope we’re not ranked 298th again in offense.
I guess we found the parent of the girl
