This...we have seen a rapid change in everything college hoops and Pike has been left behind...see CVS although the change in womens hoops was more gradual and she had a reputation as a wizard
Carino Interview of Pike
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This...we have seen a rapid change in everything college hoops and Pike has been left behind...see CVS although the change in womens hoops was more gradual and she had a reputation as a wizard
Mags injury caused a lot of defensive issues the year before. You want stats, go look at 2019-2023 when he had healthy teams. His defense is clearly elite.
Let’s hope we’ll be pressing a lot and scoring will at least be a function of how successful we are at turning teams over. I have way more confidence in Steve correcting the D than I do anything on offense.
In fairness to Pike, it’s impossible to push pace when your defense can’t stop anyone. We were “that bad” to a point where an insanely high percentage of our offensive possessions started with a side out affording time for the opponent to get their D set.
Our guards would’ve had a way higher chance of being successful at stopping the D using traps than running our horrible vanilla D but we didn’t go there. As said - I don’t think that style was good for Dylan.
You rather watch the shit show of this season? The Rac is the Rac when we play defense.
This has been one of the biggest issues in this program under multiple coaches. Pikiell has been better than many of his predecessors, but not nearly good enough.
She had a reputation as a defensive wizard. A lot of her teams were stone age offensively.
Glaring problem with this approach is Pike will never get past being a bubble/first round team, if the expectation is to be more than that. We are not and will never be UVA. We have to have some sort of above-average offensive play, either driven through player skillset or proper coaching.
In general, when your plan is to play 2 guys 33 mpg, an intense, pressing style defense is going to be sub-optimal.
For better or worse, no, probably not. Each of those teams had a legit rim protector on them (some had more than one). Since we won’t be able to afford that now, we can likely expect to see a defense similar to the one we ran with Mag in the game in 2022-23 when we were 16-7 (which included 2 early losses without Paul and Caleb). That street ball style press which, when ran effectively, didn’t require a rim protector and led to a lot of fast break points. We rarely if ever pressed during the 15 minutes Mag wasn’t in the game. Pike was hesitant to use it as with Caleb because he didn’t want him in foul trouble because of how important he was in the halfcourt possessions. And Pike generally stops pressing once teams reach the bonus - or definitely double bonus. Figure we pressed 30-40% of the time that season before Mag went down? Next season that could swing to 60%ish or even more - I don’t see it being a slow down style though without a rim protector. That would be foolish.
Pike likes the press. Always has. Some coaches are adverse to it but not him. And he even chose to use it for Dylan’s last game. I’d be shocked if we’re not in store for a heavy dose of it.
No, it's not the only thing we do. For example, for four years we used to run the three man weave at the top of the key for 20 seconds, then shoot a contested three.
Next tell us about our extensive list of in-bound plays.
The 2022-23 team was very good before Mag went down. That team could switch back and forth between a UVA and a Bob Huggins press VA style. When Mag went down we lost the latter ability and didn’t have the roster depth to win consistently with only the former - especially up front. The scoring droughts had been addressed when we would turn on the pressure. But we lost that ability because Mag was the anchor of that press.
It’s possible to have a very good season through D first. See St Johns and all those Press VA teams. Bob Huggins press teams didn’t have any stud recruits on them. Several of them were 3 seeds in the tournament - far from bubble level.
Huggins is a great example of a coach who targeted effort. I recently saw an interview with Huggins and he found an unranked guy in the back court of a AAU tournament who wasn’t a great scorer and offered him just off his full court defense on every play. That’s the extreme case but it’s the general philosophy that needs to be adopted. Coaching is 70-80% getting players to play harder than the opponent. That is Pike’s way. Those are also guys that are easy to root for.
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I know you're looking for fortune and glory with your takes here, but you are having trouble keeping up with the Joneses. No one is saying we don't have offensive issues, in terms of scheme and/or talent, but your take is so reductive that it take away any chance of nuance or actual conversation. You might as well come here and just say, "I'm mad and we need a new coach" instead of going hyperbolic in your takes on some of the things here.
We run zoom actions, horns, and some pin down sets. We like to go inside out, which is probably antiquated, but it's what we do. Again, the offense can be a lot better and we run a lot of basic stuff--but saying we just take contested end-of-shot clock threes is reduction. You might say, with this argument, you chose poorly.
but alot has changed....this scores are outrageous now in the tournament and regular season...having million dollar players who want to score and no accountability to committ to defense
Which could be fine, with the right group of kids. In Pike’s system, a decent portion of offense has to be generated from defense to be effective. When you have kids like JY who can execute that, this philosophy can work. When you have guys like Derek and Davis who miss those easy transition lay ups routinely, it doesn’t.
The press was the only remotely effective defense we had the whole season, should have pressed a lot more than we did.
Pike will provide his typical glowing “I love this team” forecast once he assembles the team and acquires the transfers. No one should fall for that ever again. Still remember him peeing on our legs and telling us it was raining during the offseasons telling us that the Hyatt/Cliff/Fernandez team would be an offensive juggernaut and Ogbole was this explosive athlete who could leap tall buildings in a single bound like Superman.
oh i guarantee there will be posters on this board completely brightsiding the portal players Pike brings in and then starting threads declaring they will score 75 points per game and play x amount of minutes...never fails..thats why i generally stay away from the board from May to October...it becomes unreadable and their source material will be Pike and Carino
That’s rich. The board is only unreadable with any positive viewpoints. There’s another article today from Politi so with Carino and Fonseca that makes three thoughtful, objective articles from actual, you know, journalists. But I value the opinions of our resident board experts far more.
May can’t come soon enough.
It's funny in this day and age you think there are thoughtful, objective journalists. They only write to get clicks/read now. Almost nothing is thoughtful, objective, or in depth.
Ironically - I’m hoping for just the opposite. A bunch of kids with ugly Caleb, Mag or even JY (Texas) type stats. Bring on them complaints about how we’re only going to score 50 points. If we bring in a bunch of 18 ppg NJIT types who are defensive projects we’re headed down Eddie Jordan lane. But yes, I agree with you. There would be those talking about how the group we brought in project to be a collection of Cam Spencers. For sure.
That crew may as well start up now on Kaden Powers. He projects as an offense only type. Bizarre addition by Pike in my opinion. The other 3 have more promise. Ware is a below the rim type mostly but he’s supposed to be excellent at defensive rebounding which is more than can be said about Lathan. For me - being I’ve been studying some WVU ball, he projects as a Kevin Jones type of player.
I will be disappointed if Nwuli isn’t a defensive stud off the bat. I never expect much, but I’m expecting him to be a hit. Pike knows defense. Just the way we landed that kid - by outbidding. Based on what Pike liked on the AAU circuit and deciding he had to have him. I have high expectations from that kid. The recruiting of him didn’t follow a Pike like pattern. We don’t outbid anyone usually… especially for a kid we weren’t even in the hunt for.
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Wow, good job disparaging an entire profession. Yes, there are many thoughtful journalists, so maybe you should notch up your reading game a few levels. And no, I’m not putting Politi, Carino and Fonseca in the pantheon of the greats. But I sure as hell find them more credible, interesting and professional than Bac, Chow and Lou.
I feel from an organizational standpoint, unless there is coaching turnover, we will see similar things. Pikiell's best strategies and schemes here got us to tops the second round. I feel like the bar has to be higher.
If everyone stays, can the changes that need to be made really happen? Many see this year as a big disappointment, and I agree. It was the first time Pikiell drifted in his methodology, and it was terrible. Nonetheless, was there enough prior to this year to say everything was good enough then? I have hopes, and some doubts.
If everyone stays, can the changes that need to be made really happen? Many see this year as a big disappointment, and I agree. It was the first time Pikiell drifted in his methodology, and it was terrible. Nonetheless, was there enough prior to this year to say everything was good enough then? I have hopes, and some doubts.
🤦♂️
Cmon guys, can we at least attempt to be smart with our insults. These guys wouldn’t come back for a million. The goal is to get in the league early so they get their max contract earlier.
this is a message board not a cheering section for journalists
people posts their opinions here...not sure where the site suddenly became a news organization or how anyone actually made it into one
weird post
you are free to drop in your heroes dms
"Pikiell envisions the general manager as having a legal and financial background, with a firm grasp of the changing NCAA landscape, an ability to draft contracts for players, and chops in fundraising, sponsorship cultivation and revenue-stream creation."Rutgers basketball: Steve Pikiell on roster-building, a GM, and scheduling
Steve Pikiell discussed Rutgers basketball's changed approach to the 2025 offseason and has a message for fanswww.app.com
Some good insights into his thinking.
Legal and financial background? Firm grasp? Draft contracts? Chops in fundraising?
There's a guy who may be looking for a job. Rhymes with this guy's last name:
Virginia under Bennett was able to do both. With the amount of subbing Pike/Knight do there's no reason they couldn't.
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Nope. That guy is right.
HC Pike just needs to offer a whole $1 million dollars (gee whiz) and I'm sure Ace and Dylan will come back.
Can't believe Pike hasn't thought of that.
One thing that always caught my attention with Mag was how effortless his speed looked.
Virginia under Bennet had a historically awful offense. I wouldn't do anything they were doing on offense.
And yet they won and went to 10 NCAA appearances in 14 seasons (didn't count Covid yr.). He took defensive players combined them with 1 star player and ran a motion offense. He manufactured a lot of baskets because they couldn't shoot..
The NIL thing is going to be interesting. The latest pay walled Politi article (which for reasons unknown to me opened from my desktop computer but not my phone) says we’ll have between $4 and $4.5 M to work with in total next year including the $3M referenced in this article. It also implies that pretty much everyone could have this money or more (in some cases a lot more). So does that mean basically everyone starter ends up making $300k plus? Is that the new norm?
I’m less concerned with the tournament than the season on a whole. March madness is still just a very small subset. St John’s won mostly with D. I think there’s at least a chance we’ll be able to also. The one thing Pike will have going for him is he won’t owe anyone returning or arriving anything. No decisions will be based on making sure player A or B is kept happy. As crazy as it sounds - the job in front of Pike to rebuild this season might be easier than last year for him. More in his wheel house anyway.
It also lead to a historic loss because they couldn’t score.
College basketball is more offensive than ever. You have to be able to defend but it you can’t score it won’t matter.
FFS seriously. Ace/Dylan will be just north of 10-12 mil/year for the first 3 years. And the second contract could be 50-80 million/yr. And the closing in on 100 million/yr with the 3rd while they’re in their primes at 10 years in. With the contract structure, every year they delay is a year of misalignment of their prime years and max earning ability.
And Dylan will be way more marketable as an NBA player. And since he’s half Filipino, he has a whole other continent that he’s uniquely positioned for.
