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Building year for basketball because there is no Money

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.
Love the optimism but we still do not have a D1 power 4 player on the roster. Potentially in a year or 2 sure but none ready next year.
Pikes wing scorer is smaller than my 13 yr old and probably less talented.

No one would come here even w the money.

We have a coach problem which will be fixed next year.
 
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.

But the thing is, if Dylan and Ace weren’t on the team, Pike also would’ve ran his traditional defense, and rotated a lot of guys alternating between full press and relentless halfcourt trap schemes that he used until Dylan lost stamina in the last few games. I have no doubt we would’ve allowed less points per possession. Would it have been 10 less points? Who knows.
 
Then live in fantasy land idk what to tell you
I’m not saying you’re lying I’m just saying without the facts it’s hard for me or others to see the big picture. Or know the truth. Maybe there’s seven schools at the bottom of the big ten all within $1k of each other but we’re technically last.
 
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 didn’t say we’d score 40 less points.
There was literally a 2nd part to that sentence about replacing them with 20 points from Mag and Buchanan.

Okay - 10 points overall fewer with other maybe scoring more.

From 77ppg overall down to 67ppg.
Thats dead last in the conference this year.

Unless Mag, Derek Simpson and Buchanan were turning us into the #1 defense in the country, I think we were better off with Ace and Dylan (and the minimal PJ gave us).
 
I didn’t say we’d score 40 less points.
There was literally a 2nd part to that sentence about replacing them with 20 points from Mag and Buchanan.

Okay - 10 points overall fewer with other maybe scoring more.

From 77ppg overall down to 67ppg.
Thats dead last in the conference this year.

Unless Mag, Derek Simpson and Buchanan were turning us into the #1 defense in the country, I think we were better off with Ace and Dylan (and the minimal PJ gave us).

I certainly wasn’t claiming we would’ve been better without them.
 
I certainly wasn’t claiming we would’ve been better without them.

We certainly would’ve been less talented but that doesn’t necessarily mean our record would’ve been worse. The defense certainly would’ve been better overall if Mag and Buchanan replaced those two. How much better is tough to say.

But in a world where Pike isn’t bound to play 2 such players 30+ mpg because of who they are (and yes, their warranted offensive talents), aggressive pressing and trapping in the backcourt ala Pike’s typical defensive style, becomes more of a standard than a one off strategy. In that world, the issues we had on defense in the post become less exposed by default based on style of play alone.
 
We certainly would’ve been less talented but that doesn’t necessarily mean our record would’ve been worse. The defense certainly would’ve been better overall if Mag and Buchanan replaced those two. How much better is tough to say.

But in a world where Pike isn’t bound to play 2 such players 30+ mpg because of who they are (and yes, their warranted offensive talents), aggressive pressing and trapping in the backcourt ala Pike’s typical defensive style, becomes more of a standard than a one off strategy. In that world, the issues we had on defense in the post become less exposed by default based on style of play alone.
No we still have no bigs in that scenario and no depth and JMike way too small to press.

Your optimism is fantastic and I hope you’re right but we both know how this is going to go.
 
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Love the optimism but we still do not have a D1 power 4 player on the roster. Potentially in a year or 2 sure but none ready next year.
Pikes wing scorer is smaller than my 13 yr old and probably less talented.

No one would come here even w the money.

We have a coach problem which will be fixed next year.
Will it?
 
I’m not saying you’re lying I’m just saying without the facts it’s hard for me or others to see the big picture. Or know the truth. Maybe there’s seven schools at the bottom of the big ten all within $1k of each other but we’re technically last.

It’s pretty clear that we’re last when you look at the quality of the transfer class. NIL amounts are intentionally opaque, but what we know definitively is that we don’t have enough. How we compare to other schools doesn’t matter.
 
It’s pretty clear that we’re last when you look at the quality of the transfer class. NIL amounts are intentionally opaque, but what we know definitively is that we don’t have enough. How we compare to other schools doesn’t matter.
Sure it matters. They’re our competition. And who we got doesn’t definitively tell me that, just poor choices by a staff can do that too.
 
No we still have no bigs in that scenario and no depth and JMike way too small to press.

Your optimism is fantastic and I hope you’re right but we both know how this is going to go.

Optimism is forward looking - Mag isn’t on the roster so that’s not even a thing.

But you clearly have a short memory with regard to how the team looked in 2022-23 before Mag got hurt. The press was awesome and was used nearly every second of the 10-13ish minutes that Cliff and Caleb would get their rests - sometimes together. Wolf and Dean were no better than our front court players last season. And J Mike as a defender would’ve been just fine in the press - no worse than Derek or Paul. Acuff looked fine in the press scheme those last few games too. Harper was the issue. Huffing and puffing because it’s not realistic to play someone 30+ minutes and expect them to play that kind of D.

A press system needs an anchor. Mag for us. That Holton kid for WVU. Similar not so flashy stats - but that kid made Press VA what it was - him and Carter. We had Mag - then we didn’t. We also didn’t have lengthy athletic forwards like Dylan Grant or Bryce to replace that role. We had only Caleb who we could not afford to get into foul trouble. So our press was no longer viable. Caleb and Cliff were forced to play nearly the whole game after Mag got hurt and so their mpg reflect as much. But the two of them were not critical pieces to the press system that we ran. They certainly played some minutes with it but not that many. In contrast, they played basically every second in the traditional sets while. mag played every press possession. That was the blueprint. And I’m hoping we have the pieces to see a return. Ogbole isn’t going to wow anyone but if we’re pressing half the game and his role is to make sure we don’t fall apart the rest of the time- that might be okay.
 
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I’ll add though - I don’t expect Francis to be able to help much with any of this. Thinking back to 2022-23 I’m picturing that Temple game without Paul and Caleb and green frosh Derek Simpson left to run the point. Francis isn’t a frosh but that’s what I expect him to look like if he’s our PG. he’s not even a good primary ball handler against American East pressure. I sure hope to be proven wrong.
 
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Sure it matters. They’re our competition. And who we got doesn’t definitively tell me that, just poor choices by a staff can do that too.

The information you seek isn’t publicly available.

We don’t have choices so we take what we can get. Lack of resources restrict us as to whom we can pursue. This is how we wind up with Francis and Buchanan, whom no other Big Ten schools would pursue, and are a complete roll of the dice.

A salesman is only as good as his product. Right now, we don’t have much to sell.
 
Because we don’t have the resources to recruit Europe. You need scouts, boots on the ground, and travel resources. That gets expensive.
How did we get Oskar? Heck, I would have been okay with retaining him as our 13th scholarship player, at whatever scraps we had left to pay him. Would he have stayed for $100k? (I have no idea how much we had left in the coffers but I gotta believe it wasn’t $0).
 
Shouldn't this brand of lug-headed intolerence be kept on the OT board?
How am I intolerant for thinking it's not the best marketing pitch to feature someone with purple hair and multiple bull rings in their nose? You're being obtuse.
 
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I can’t believe I renewed my season tickets.

Any thread about NIL seems to be plastered with your negative posts.

I’m frustrated and had to seriously think about whether I was renewing this year.

But with all due respect, nobody forced you to renew your tickets and you had plenty of time to make a sound decision.

I really hope we don’t have to keep reading about how you regret renewing your tickets in every other thread for the next year.
 
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Any thread about NIL seems to be plastered with your negative posts.

I’m frustrated and had to seriously think about whether I was renewing this year.

But with all due respect, nobody forced you to renew your tickets and you had plenty of time to make a sound decision.

I really hope we don’t have to keep reading about how you regret renewing your tickets in every other thread for the next year.
1) within board rules I can post whatever I like. When NIL sucks and the product sucks I can complain if I want to
2) you don’t have to read it

Hey we all make good choices and bad ones. Hopefully more good than bad. I tried my best to decide. Ultimately I have a good time going to games either my friend so I renewed. Then the product that RU puts on the court seems to get worse each day. I made a poor decision in hindsight.

Now I’ll start making good decisions, by ignoring you. Guess what, if I don’t renew next year, as a fan, I can still point out how bad the program is. Take good care!
 
1) within board rules I can post whatever I like. When NIL sucks and the product sucks I can complain if I want to
2) you don’t have to read it

Hey we all make good choices and bad ones. Hopefully more good than bad. I tried my best to decide. Ultimately I have a good time going to games either my friend so I renewed. Then the product that RU puts on the court seems to get worse each day. I made a poor decision in hindsight.

Now I’ll start making good decisions, by ignoring you. Guess what, if I don’t renew next year, as a fan, I can still point out how bad the program is. Take good care!

You can post whatever you want.

And I can respond by saying you’re a pretty miserable person on this board and getting rather annoying by spewing the same negativity over and over.

You’re an adult and made a decision to renew your tickets, with plenty of time and information to make this decision.

Quit crying about it.

Otherwise you shouldn’t have renewed.
 
Is this thread still a thing? Are we rebuilding for 2026-2027?
 
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