Onyenso officially back and transferring….Coleman Hawkins too. One will end up at UNC
Our new center?
- Thread starter Morrischiano
- Start date
100%. People saying otherwise seriously, just dumb
We are going to miss Cliff. He gave us four good years! Wish it could have been five. However, I am looking forward to watching what we have coming. I expect that there will be more than a few alley oops from Dylan to Ace that we will all enjoy watching.
I know we aren't getting him but Coleman Hawkins would be amazing on this team.
I wish those sitting on the NIL sidelines would push their chips in for this one basketball season.
I guess if they don’t this yr then they never will.
I guess if they don’t this yr then they never will.
This is exactly it in a nutshell. I would even say his one on one defense was average.
There are a lot of people standing around the table just watching other people play.
Props, Motor. You nail it. Cliff also created TO's for other players by not anticipating any but the most scripted pass. For instance, in addition to bad hands, he never seemed to get that when your man helps out on a penetrating guard the pass can come to you as a lob OR as a bounce pass. Also, at some points, I think he began hunting "blocks," making what may have been bd decisions in terms of team defense. I think he was "average," one grade below "good." His highlight reel was better than his game.
That said, we may still miss him this year. He is experienced with the rigors of B1G basketball. Think Ogbole is a significant drop off from Cliff (hope he can surprise me, but still not much experience). I really like Lathan but he'll be in battle for the first time. If we miss Cliff, it's because we'll be replacing him with a less than average 5.
I don't think CO was a very good player at Rutgers. But please don't scream that I hate him: I love his off the course interactions with fans and academically he was a great representative of the university.
That's bs. He became a much better player from his freshman to junior year.
The number is small donors has a big impact on the big donors. They want to feel a part of something big.
He ditched RU for the bigger Alabama payout. What can you do? Would be great if he bled scarlet, and took a little less cash, but oh well. Sounds like Sommerville would have been pissed if he stayed anyway.
The difference was probably the better part of a mil. Henry Rutgers doesn’t bleed that much scarlet.
He is doing a post grad year…what’s the problem? Most guys went to different schools for their postgrad even before the portal…this ‘he doesn’t bleed scarlet’ and he betrayed us narrative is trash.
Also he would have to be crazy to pass up a million plus dollars to play basketball for a few months before he has to go to the gleague and make 40k a year
The days of bleeding scarlet or any other color for that matter are gone. These are professional athletes on one-year deals. Adapt or get left behind.
Cliff and Rutgers parting ways seemed to be a mutual decision, be happy for both sides. I'm not thrilled that Cliff left but I understand why he did it. Next year's team could model or resemble the Nova Knicks, Dylan/Ace taking the Brunson/Randle roles for Rutgers next year and Cliff didn't want a Mitchell Robinson/Hartenstein kind of role taking minimal shots a game in his final year. It might be hard to recruit a 5 to take that role especially experienced players in their final yr. It is very important to showcase and highlight Ace and Dylan's success and skill sets to NBA scouts and future 5 stars that we can do this right the first time. It can make or break the foreseeable future recruiting of 5 stars into this program.
If Cliff has real aspirations of making it in the NBA, he needs to be a consistent mid range shooter, 21-22 29-75, 22-23 29-102, 23-24 27-94, mid range 85-271 31.4% and 7-35 20% from 3 and handling the ball better. I saw that at last year's NBA combine he attended and minimal improvement in both categories this past season.
If Cliff has real aspirations of making it in the NBA, he needs to be a consistent mid range shooter, 21-22 29-75, 22-23 29-102, 23-24 27-94, mid range 85-271 31.4% and 7-35 20% from 3 and handling the ball better. I saw that at last year's NBA combine he attended and minimal improvement in both categories this past season.
I'm not happy he left and I'm sure Rutgers didn't want him to leave but they didn't have the money.
Exactly. If the last spot is filled by a frosh who projects to need work on D, it’s even more unfortunate. Smart money says that our long term pipeline with the one and dones lies on what we can do on the defensive end this year. We have an established brand that differentiates us. We have ourselves a home run if we can demonstrate that D is still a development priority under Pike with much better offensive players. That’s how we move towards a legacy - by building on what we already started and what RU is already known for. “Rutgers is the program that will develop you into the most well rounded player you can be for the NBA”. Thats what we want to be able to market.
It’s amazing to me that so many of our fans don’t see this. Do folks not realize that even if their Loyola Marymount dream did come true, unless we’re final four level good despite mediocre D (which would be highly unlikely) - that outcome would position us to be one hit wonders. Reputationally - we don’t become the school to go to for offense from one good output season.
Some of you act like you definitely know our defense will suck. You can't know that and besides we had an experienced center last year,Cliff, who couldn't do it on his own to get us more wins than losses. One thing that has been pretty constant, trust our coaching staff to teach defense.
I think everyone agrees, last year showed Pike can get guys to perform on the defensive end.
However, this is the first time in a while that he doesn't project to have an excellent defensive center anchor backing guys up. I said once before, if Pike keeps this team in top ten D territory with no rum protector, a slower, not great Martini, freshman, and a bunch of lengthy defenders of varying quality, you can enter him into the defensive coaching hall of fame.
I think most of our top recent recruits known for their offense cited wanting to learn D for the next level as one of the reasons to come to RU. I think that includes Griffiths and Bailey.
Yes - exactly. And for the avoidance of doubt, GG’s D improved three fold during the season. The trouble was his starting point was far worse than any schollie player in recent memory to wear a Rutgers uniform. We’ve had some sub par defenders before. Hyatt did not come in with strong D. Jaden Jones struggled mightily with perimeter D, but in his case - the issue was more that he didn’t buy in to the idea of wanting to improve at D. He just wanted to be a scorer, it seemed.
GG wanted to learn. But in his case, he inexplicably came in with no concept of help D whatsoever. I don’t recall ever seeing anything like that before. It actually led me to wonder if his teams only played zone in HS and AAU that’s how clueless he started.
Pike did wonders for that kid, and he’ll never acknowledge it. Oh well. The point I was trying to make is that a year like Nebraska had last season would do absolutely nothing for RU ability to recruit. A similar season outcome with an elite D and Dylan and Ace developing into all around players on both sides of the ball would be great for the program.
Who says he doesn't " project" to have a excellent defensive center?? And what does that even mean ?
I say. Most people say. Are you projecting Ogbole or Sommerville to be excellent defensive centers this year?
There will probably be a learning curve for both
Latham will see how physical it is out there early enough and attempt to match up, but I could see him getting in foul trouble a lot till he learns what and how far you can go
There might be games we need to go to our 3rd string center if both of these guys have 3 fouls too soon in a game
Hopefully that does not happen too often
Pikiel has a good track record of developing good defensive centers. Hopefully, he will be able to do it with Lathan and Ogbole. He has had some misses like Agee, but overall he has done pretty well developing them defensively.
With Pike, that's understandable, especially for Ogbole, but I don't see any chance of it with LS this year.
Myles Johnson's freshman year he wasn't physically prepared so had a reshirt year. His soph year he had 18mins a game and 6 rebs, 1 block and 5 pts. Cliff's freshman year he was injured, but still had 15 mins a game, 1 bloc, 4 rebs, and 4 pts.
I think Egbole is physically very prepared and has the physical tools, and has more experience than either Cliff or MJ did their first years. I'd be surprised if we didn't get significantly more than what we got from them. Lathan should be behind Egbole on D, but ahead of where MJ was a freshman.
I agree with you on Ogbole. I think he’s going to be better than folks expect on D. Pike is yet to have a center who hasn’t taken major strides on the defensive end in year 2 (other than Wolf. He was a real bust. But it was almost like Wolf was trying to be converted to a 4). Cliff, MJ, Shaq Carter, and Shaq Doorson all improved in their second season in Pike’s program.
Sommerville is another story as his scouting reports say he needs work on D. We don’t know what MJ looked like at practice as a frosh so it’s hard to draw that comparison. Do you expect Sommerville’s starting D to be better than Shaq Carter’s in (2018-19)? It’s one thing to hope it will (because Shaq really struggled with D that year) but there’s really no reason to expect it based on the available information at this point. It would be a pleasant surprise.
He gave us 4 years and graduated. In this day and age, that is commitment. Without Covid, that’s all he could have done.
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