Whether we are a Quad 2 or 3 loss for Nebraska is something I give negative ****s about
THE OFFICIAL 2024-2025 NET RANKINGS THREAD
- Thread starter bac2therac
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No just explainations for the losses.
We both know the defensive issues or the lack of defense and a rim protector is the reason we have lost a lot of these games. That is the truth and I think something we can agree upon.
If bac didn't have RU to put down he'd have nothing. Wouldn't you just love to have him in the proverbial foxhole with you
Genuinely curious and pose this to all that view others as being too negative, beating up on the hoops program or Pike too much, etc.., what are the positives that you see with the current state of Rutgers basketball? The rest of us must just be glass half empty kind of guys, what makes your glass half full when it comes to the current trajectory of Rutgers basketball? Would love to know others thoughts as I just don’t see it.
Reality is no one knows what would have happened if we were healthy all year but objectively it’s not a stretch to say it would have been better. How much is certainly debatable.
Once you are 13-14, there's really no need for explanations for 14(!) losses... at the end of the day, you are a sub-.500 team and not anyone the committee is going to give a second thought to.
Never said for a minute that we would be on the committee’s radar at 13-14 . Not sure where you pulled that from ? Please tell.
You're trying to explain away losses on a board about NET ranking, which exists solely for use by the committee. Our NET is meaningless to us right now, because we've stockpiled losses. It doesn't matter if they were "close" or a "rivalry" or whatever. There are just too many to "explain" beyond a simple "we weren't very good".
The only reason anyone on the committee would dig deeper into what teams we lost to and by how much (let alone circumstances of those losses) would be if we were on the bubble. Which we aren't.
This thread is about NET, which is a large part of the committee's radar. If you want to rationalize our losing record, there are plenty of threads to do that in that aren't devoted to NET rankings (i.e., what the committee considers)
No I am not. I disagreed with BAC saying Rutgers NET 79 is a bad loss for Nebraska. I never mentioned we were on the Committee’s radar with this record.
Maybe you came into the thread late and missed the discussion
It IS a bad loss. Because the committee looks at NET, and we're a Q3 loss for them right now. Q3 losses to teams not close to the bubble are bad losses on the resume.
If you are astute, you'll notice I rarely comment about my expectations, good or bad, about RU s performance. So defending RU has nothing to do with the glass being half full or half empty.. personally bitching ,complaining etc about the team or coaches from those that really don't have real info about what's going on is a waste of time and doesn't help RU.. Biitching may be fun to some but to me it's not constructive.
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I wouldn’t necessarily say I think the current state of Rutgers basketball is good, but here are the ways that I think some people are too negative.
(1) Pike has not done a good job in the portal era. BUT, the portal era has really only been two years. The first year he made a fatal mistake in not figuring out for certain who was in and who was out right away. He seems to have learned from that mistake. This year he made mistakes in his player selection. I think it’s plausible he will learn from those mistakes as well.
(2) People tend to blame Pike for every bad thing that a player does. A perfect example is Dylan’s play at the end of regulation against Washington. That’s a player issue 100%.
(3) People dismiss Pike’s success in years 1-6 as mediocrity. But it matters where you start. If I am 15 pounds overweight that’s mediocre. If I was 80 pounds overweight a year ago, then that’s a success.
This DOES NOT MEAN that I am content being mediocre forever just because we used to be terrible. What it means is that I accept mediocrity as a step on the journey from terrible to good. It also means that I accept that 40 years of wandering in the desert made it tougher to win here. We are in year 10 next year so I won’t view losing in the first four as some great success. But in context 2020-2022 were definitely successes.
lol we’ve had this same discussion in slightly different contexts 100 times. goru thinks like everyone inside the top 200 doesn’t qualify as a “bad team” or “bad loss”
Flux be fair and accurate. We are 79 inthe NET nothing close to 200 and their loss to us we be a pimple on their resume that the Committee will ignore . If they bother to look they will see they lost by 1 to a team that had ACE and Dylan healthy and playing . Like I said the loss means very little. Plus 75 is Quad 2 so we are closer to 2 than 3.
It's just a semantics thing imo; obviously losing to the 79 team is different than losing to the 200 team so where you start calling things "bad loss" is just a convention. It really doesn't matter.
I really do not think the committee is going to be parsing Rutgers season to figure out who was playing when people lost to us. We aren't special.
Maybe , maybe not. Since you and BAC think it is a bad loss and something that might decide whether they get in or not if they do not keep winning , if am going to if I am on the committee to examine the Quad 3 loss. Then realize it wasn’t a bad loss
I didn't say anything about whether it was a bad loss or not but there isn't any evidence Rutgers is some powerhouse when healthy lol. We were healthy through that whole non-conference shitshow.
Please don't respond with in depth analysis about how we were turning the corner, just if not for Dylan's injuries and blah blah. I'm not even saying you're wrong, necessarily. I'm saying that's the kind of stuff literally only Rutgers fans are going to know or care about. A loss to Rutgers is a loss to a 13-14 (6-10) team with a #78 NET, period.
Rutgers lost to Iowa Princeton and Kennesaw at full strength
Healthy Bailey or harper is much better defensively than a sick Bailey or a sick or hobbled Harper so have to disagree
Anyone who follows this stuff needs to recognize that the combination of player mobility and more good players has created a lot more parity among the power 5…..and the margin of error be unbelievably thin
6-10/13-14…..could just as easily be 5-11/10-17
with shaky close end game wins against seton hall , Notre dame and Washington ….
Conversely, how would be feeling right now if
We weee 8–8/17-10 by
-not blowing games against Iowa and Penn state that we had control of ….
-Derkack gets a stop against Princeton and we get the win
-ace doesn’t throw it away against Kennesaw state , and instead brings it io and gets a hoop
For win
The difference is razor thin being a 9 seed and a complete dumpster fire …
Just keep that in mind when you write your posts and consider what other say…….
6-10/13-14…..could just as easily be 5-11/10-17
with shaky close end game wins against seton hall , Notre dame and Washington ….
Conversely, how would be feeling right now if
We weee 8–8/17-10 by
-not blowing games against Iowa and Penn state that we had control of ….
-Derkack gets a stop against Princeton and we get the win
-ace doesn’t throw it away against Kennesaw state , and instead brings it io and gets a hoop
For win
The difference is razor thin being a 9 seed and a complete dumpster fire …
Just keep that in mind when you write your posts and consider what other say…….
So what ? They beat UCLA and Illinois at full strength and when their opponent was at full strength and beat Nebraska and Notthwestern at full strength when Nebraska had won 20 at a row at home and NW was 10-1 at home and both Nebraska and NW were at full strength.
There is an adage coaches use when discussing teams and Painter who is brilliant on this topic, says that it is important to consider not just who you have played but when you played them , whether they were hot or going thru a losing streak.
And I know you do not want to hear it but most basketball people think it is really important , we barely lost to Alabama and Texas A& M, who are 2 top 10 teams at full strength and when they were at full strength.
Excellent post that puts to shame that everything is a disaster or dumpster fire .
ACE couldn’t handle his homecoming and the team couldn’t handle their first road game allowing the first half and losing against Kennesaw .
Princeton played like their best game of the year and their 2 stars, Lee and Pierce played lights out and Pike’s brain fart at the end allowing Martini to guard Lee 3 times cost a win.
Both razor thin differences that impacted the year and just changing those 2 results make it 15-12 with no Quad 3 losses and no losses outside Quad 1 and 2 and barely any Quad 2 losses.
FWIW Kennesaw now at 135. That means they're now a quad 2 loss by the slimmest of margins.
And that's why rutgers is a mediocre 13-14...not surprising they got a few nice wins and not not surprising they have a few bad losses
We also barely beat a bad Notre Dame No one cares we played close in Vegas..we lost and never backed that play up later..our next game we were completely outclassed at Ohio State and needed a buzzer beater to beat a historically bad Seton Hall
The team was never close to do anything. Its never won more than 2 conference games in a row. A futile exercise in trying to make all kinds of excuses. Let it go already
Yup. The discussion now regarding Rutgers should be about next year’s blueprint. Would be fun to make things interesting down the stretch but barring a miracle nothing about the remainder of this season much matters.
Some general themes I’m hoping for off season:
1) Must bring in a physical big man. Does not have to be someone with stellar stats - just someone who checks the box of good advanced numbers on def efficiency. 225 pounds minimum and no smaller than 6-9 (real).
2) along the same theme - the advanced stats matter for portal recruits. Nobody with bad numbers on def efficiency should be considered. I don’t care how good they shoot - in Pike’s system, nobody who doesn’t defend has success.
3) Don’t leave major holes. Figure out who is staying and recruit parts based on what we’re missing. We have 5 PGs on our current team. Only J Will is really able to slide over to defend 3s.
4) please don’t bring in some kid we played this past season at Kennesaw who had a career day against us. It didn’t work with Noah and Zach. Third time is unlikely to be a charm.
The circularity is pretty interesting. They're a Q2 in part because they beat us. Which weirdly benefits us from this perspective.
NET doesn't care about your record. It's not a win/loss results-based metric. We are a Q3 team because of our offensive/defensive efficiency on the court over 27 games, not because of our record. If we'd scored just 2 more points vs. Princeton, 3 more vs Kennesaw, and 4 more vs Michigan... we'd be 16-11, and still not much better in NET.
Minnesota is 14-12 and 12 spots behind us, Ohio St is 15-12 and 45 spots ahead of us. Your record doesn't matter. It's your play on the court - and our defense has been mediocre/poor, while our offense has been inconsistent.
We have not played especially well this year. We're just outside the top 20% across all 364 NCAA Teams... but, when looking at major conferences (SEC, B1G, B12, ACC, BE) we're in the bottom 25%. That's not based on our record, but our actual on-court production. Nearly every team has had to deal with injuries, illness, early departures, the transfer portal, bad calls, etc... we're not special in that sense.
As you say, a few balls breaking for/against us could have resulted in a swing of 3-4 wins in either direction, which puts us pretty much where one would expect if those 50/50 games split about 50/50. We are what our record says we are - a low-end major conference school. Exactly the kind of school you don't want to lose to on your home court if you are a bubble hopeful, but who doesn't look too bad as a road loss.
Derkack's DRating at Merrimack was 91.3 across two years, and 108.8 at Rutgers. He was the NEC defensive player of the year last year as well as the NEC leading scorer. Can't necessarily trust advanced stats from lower conferences, either.
LOL.... say's the guy who now finally admits he NEVER adds ANYTHING to the conversation that isn't HIS OWN bitching about other posters.
I’ve explained my position on Jordan in other posts. He’s the one transfer pick up that made sense to me. He’s not having a good year defensively and you could argue that Pike should’ve realized that being a good zone defender doesn’t always translate to man schemes or at least a learning curve should be expected. That said - Jordan played for a D first system and is a kid who culturally fits the mold in focusing on D even if his execution hasn’t been good.
So I stand by what I said. Good D efficiency numbers should be a prerequisite. We’ve struck out enough times with the PJ, Acuff and Agee types. If you don’t focus on D you don’t work out in a Pike coached system. That’s not to say every kid with good D efficiency numbers will come into RU and excel on that end. But on the flip side - I don’t recall any transfer with poor D efficiency numbers ever working out for us. Those types should be avoided from here on in.
you'll never get a real answer to this. Just like when I call out two other long time posters to back up their challenges with real wagers . They just ignore because it's easier than manning up.
Most people who remotely follow college hoops would say we should be at 16 wins now.
I’ll add to this as a stand alone - this undoubtedly means we probably wouldn’t be landing many guys with pretty looking offensive stats because those types of portal kids will likely be out of our price range. We might be able to afford one guy with Cam Spencer’s profile a year in the portal. That would be it.
In my view - we should use whatever money we have to bring in the best all around player we can get early on. Strategy one. Then from there, we can campaign to raise what is needed the rest of the way. After that first target - the focus should slant towards Dbig time. Hustle players work out for Pike. Finesse players who shot the ball well other places but took plays off on D don’t succeed at Rutgers. They don’t even find the court. So why bring them here?
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