I agree, would have made a massive difference on this team. Look at last night on the beautiful insde pass to Ogbole who went to dunk it got blocked. If that was Cliff he dunks that and its an "and 1 " too and we win.
Ogbole is who he is. A reserve that can spell the main guy. Hopefully Somerville can develop the toughness we seek, but till date he’s been making his living hitting bunnies
People take players for granted. Mulcahey would have made a big difference last year
Don't think anyone was happy Cliff was leaving
I pointed this out in the first few minutes of the game yesterday.
Mulcahy mostly rode coat tails imo with a big caveat to how well he was able to make use of cliff for both their sakes.
You should go back and do some reading then
Agreed. I think Pike should try to develop Lathan into more of a PF over the offseason and add a true rim-protecting center in the portal. Add in a good transfer portal point guard and I could see the vision to a team like that being decent
It would need to be a rim protecting center that was efficient around the perimeter on offense then because Lathan would be clogging the paint. Lathan isn't a 4. Probably isn't a 5 either, but he needs to spend the offseason getting stronger.
Not necessarily. Other teams in the Big Ten start 2 big men that aren't necessarily going to stretch the perimeter (Indiana, Michigan, Maryland, etc.)
Those were people without a clue
This ^^^^. Whoever anyone wants to blame for losing Cliff, the answer is actually $$$$ as with most things in life. It has almost certainly always been our RU sports problem. Most other schools have always realized the depth of the pool in which they have decided to swim - and at least acknowledged the need to find resources to compete. At RU we are always looking to offer our latest contract/commitment of the day to the lowest bidder. To blame coaches or players for lack of subsequent success has almost always been missing the real problem...such a shame. Go RU!
People are going to need to step up to land a quality Center
Give it a rest Al. It's not happening. You're getting annoying.
Somerville is incredibly undersized...Pike will have to better
Somerville is undersized but given our lack of resources I don’t have any confidence we can recruit better.
If Cliff accepted his role he has on Bama, the team would have definitely been better, however if he wanted the ball in the post like we used to feed him, team would have probably been worse. He was the worst post player for a big man I ever seen
He left for the bag but it is striking what a small role he has at Bama. I’m sure he thought he’d play more. This year has done nothing to improve his profile.
We didn’t “lose” Cliff. Cliff graduated and wanted to leave. He was never coming back.
We put enough 0’s at the end of his Check, he would have been back.
He didn’t even want to be here is senior year. He was very disappointed he had no NBA interest and was basically going through the motions. This year he chose to play with the best team that would take him and get paid for it, accepting the NBA was not and will not be an option. Alabama was an experienced Final Four team last year and was returning most of their production. Cliff had no interest in playing with the freshmen.
Lathan is essentially a power forward as far as rim protection is concerned with his lack of jumping ability and quick burst off the floor. Cliff was truly a freak of nature in that department.
Agree. Another clueless Al post. It wasn't about Cliff. It was about Pike not understanding how to evaluate talent and put together a competent roster around Ace and Dylan. It could have and should have been done. It's not about NIL or Cliff. It's about Pike and failing to function properly in this environment
For $1M, I wouldn’t want to play with freshmen either. He decided to cash in and there’s nothing wrong with that.
It absolutely is about Cliff because we haven’t replaced what he brought to the table. Meanwhile, his new team already has 23 Wins. So it worked out for him.
Bama would have the same number of wins without Cliff
