Rutgers basketball: 5 thoughts from summer practice with ‘refreshing’ vibe
NJ Advance Media viewed a Rutgers basketball summer workout on Thursday. Here are five takeaways.
Rutgers basketball: 5 thoughts from summer practice with ‘refreshing’ vibe (Now With Videos)
- Thread starter Tango Two
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Man, JMike must be so incredibly annoying to bring the ball up against. So pesky.
First few practices and that defense is already more then impressive. We win the B1G this year. Mark it down.
Can understand the Somerville needs to get in shape comments now. He needs to improve lateral quickness
My takeaways from these short videos:
- defensive intensity is still there
- will probably continue to struggle from 3
- Somerville is clearly a freshman and needs some time to get ready for this level
- ace is the real deal
- dercak moves up on the list, acuff moves down
- defensive intensity is still there
- will probably continue to struggle from 3
- Somerville is clearly a freshman and needs some time to get ready for this level
- ace is the real deal
- dercak moves up on the list, acuff moves down
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Agree Dercak looks like an athlete and a great defender. May be huge underrated get in the end, experienced and hopefully stays for senior year to be a leader and starter
Martini and Hayes will have to make 4 or 5 combined 3s a game for our 3 point game to be much improved. Harper and Bailey can make a couple a game too
Martini and Hayes will have to make 4 or 5 combined 3s a game for our 3 point game to be much improved. Harper and Bailey can make a couple a game too
I really hope JMike can figure the shooting out, such an explosive athlete and disruptive defender
Guards
JWill/JMike/Acuff
Derkack/Acuff, til Dylan is back
Forwards
Ace &
Hayes/Martini/Grant/Dortch
Bigs
Martini/Ogbole/Sommerville
Martini will slide to the 4 for minutes with a big.
They have to figure out when Ace is off the floor to go 3 guard lineup more effective or is a combination of Hayes/Martini/Grant/Dortch with a big more effective.
Surprised Somerville tops at 285. Wasn't Shaq Doorson around 300lb coming off injury when Pike got here at 7'0. He played under 10min/game behind Gettys. That's probably best case, so Ogbole and Martini will have to cover the remaining 30-32 minutes. Getting a better idea of how things are shaping up at these early stages.
JWill/JMike/Acuff
Derkack/Acuff, til Dylan is back
Forwards
Ace &
Hayes/Martini/Grant/Dortch
Bigs
Martini/Ogbole/Sommerville
Martini will slide to the 4 for minutes with a big.
They have to figure out when Ace is off the floor to go 3 guard lineup more effective or is a combination of Hayes/Martini/Grant/Dortch with a big more effective.
Surprised Somerville tops at 285. Wasn't Shaq Doorson around 300lb coming off injury when Pike got here at 7'0. He played under 10min/game behind Gettys. That's probably best case, so Ogbole and Martini will have to cover the remaining 30-32 minutes. Getting a better idea of how things are shaping up at these early stages.
He has been campus for a week. Way to early to say 10 minutes a game is his best case.
I don't think we can take ANYTHING away from these June 20th videos, except perhaps for the fact that Ace is a great athlete (we knew this already) and JMike can freaking BALL on defense (we knew this too, but he looks even better).
There isn't enough content to draw anything more than that.
You also can't take much away from that drill, period. Ha. You could go to Rucker literally RIGHT NOW and find some guy who would carve up every single one of our players one on one in this full court drill. Does that mean he's a Big Ten starter? Nah. Prob. not even schollie-worthy at a Division 1 school, but dang he's got mad handles, twitch and a quick first step or some shifty clever moves to gain separation.
This drill, if anything, is more of a conditioning drill. Certainly not a drill that helps u determine minutes played, starting rotation, etc.
Great podcast from Richie on his practice notes
Hard not to be overly positive after listening to that!
Hard not to be overly positive after listening to that!
You see why Ace is a 5 star. He looks like a puppy (because he is) but his length and athleticism make up for mistakes. Then on offense he blows by you.
It’s one on one drills. Doesn’t mean very much on either side other than confirming that Davis is a very good on ball defender. Says nothing at all about J Will as there are very few players who would beat Davis in iso match up consistently.
Of course, in the big scheme its meaningless. One on one with no help defenders, anyone can be beat though. Davis held him to a shot clock violation. That's insane.
Huge upside with JMike. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him wind up with more playing time than JWill as the season progresses.
In my opinion, J Mike would have a very long way to go on ball distribution to surpass J Will. J Will is going to be feeding Ace and Dylan a lot. I didn’t see Davis really having that skill set last year. He’d have to make a lot of growth to get there.
JWill has an amazing opportunity to step up as a distributor with all these finishers on the court.
JMike will see the court. But he has to improve his distributing, scoring, rebounding and help D before he’s taking minutes from JWill.
This is spot on (except maybe the rebounding - I’m not sure the difference between those two on that metric is moving the needle). J Will has a much better understanding of team D concepts mostly because he has more experience. Regardless - that’s not something observable in one on one drills but it’s important. Distributing is a huge factor. From those first few games, you can see J Will has excellent court vision. Davis is far behind on this one. Has a long way to go - especially in transition where he (like Simpson) usually put his head down and hoped to get fouled. If there’s someone leaking out J Will is going to find them. He’s very valuable with that and having stars like Ace and Dylan who thrive in transition should hopefully highlight this relative strength.
I watched every all star game that he and Dylan played in together and I think Dylan is better than him!!
It’s going to be a fun ride next year
Come tourney time it would be fun to see this bunch match up with Houston…arguably one of the top 3 teams in the country.
Too soon for that level of unchecked optimism?! 😬🫣🤷🏻♂️
Too soon for that level of unchecked optimism?! 😬🫣🤷🏻♂️
I would hope someone will be feeding Dylan often in transition. I expect that someone to be J Williams.
Dylan is not really a get out ahead of the d guy in transition. He gets out w the ball and pushes, under control, at his pace. If JWill has it, those will be the times you see him take himself or expect Ace to be running w him.
I totally agree.
My prediction is that if we’re going to have a big year it’s going to be all about Dylan being a superstar. If we don’t get that, I don’t see how we’ll be a top-25 type team.
Dylan was a super star for his high school team but he did not play much point. I’m not following why at the college level he needs to be the main distributor in order to be a star. Why is it not at all in the cards for him to be a better ball handling, more efficient version of his brother on steroids? Again - he didn’t run the offense at Don Bosco.
I watched 5 or 6 Bosco games and he was, by far, the guy with the ball in his hands the most. If someone else brought it up, it found it's way to his hands relatively quick. Who brings it up across half court really isn't important.
