It was reported over the summer and TKR covered it in their latest pod cast.
Enough of playing 13 guys ….enough
- Thread starter Scarlet Shack
- Start date
Understand but that gets us what 10-11 wins! If Pike gets another year he will need those Freshmen so start now.
This year is over so get your team lined up for next year .
Listen to the TKR pod! Confirmed that is what he was paid. Thats our staff evaluation. 100 mil would not help this staff
By no means is this directed at you!
Can everyone stop with the BS academic excuse. Ppl have been using that for 24”5 years and it’s just horse s/
!If Ace Bailey could not spell cat or read at a 2nd grade level he was getting into and playing for Rutgers last year.
Academics is such a tired excuse.
They pass w out showing up! Academics are not and never have been a thing of you can play.
(right now)he's not a guy who should be getting minutes at big ten level . . but here he absolutely would be
Knicks and Spurs both played 9 guys last night. NBA games are 48 minutes compared to 40 minute college games.
Pike played 13 not only against Seton Hall, but against Michigan and Purdue. Eleven games into the season, Pike should be running a consistent 7 to 9 player rotation.
Can anybody explain Pike's thinking?
Pike played 13 not only against Seton Hall, but against Michigan and Purdue. Eleven games into the season, Pike should be running a consistent 7 to 9 player rotation.
Can anybody explain Pike's thinking?
I'm not saying you are wrong, didn't listen to the pod, but @Richie O has been saying he wasn't paid much at all for awhile.
Richie indicated they had 750k each for 3 transfers. Each not in total.
Presumably that would be Buchanan, Francis and Fall?
Not sure.
In general I think people are vastly underrating how much Fall and others got.
If the amount spent is closer to $3.5m to $4m for this roster - money has to go somewhere.
Didn’t realize this was the free board, but if you want more on those exact numbers, check out The Round Table board.
His shots will eventually fall. He was a legit high major prospect.
Don’t think you can judge assists if no one else can make a shot.
I can’t confirm any amount that Fall made, nor did we say how much he made. I know they did have high six figure money for three transfers, but unsure if Fall was given that amount. I’ll confirm his number shortly.
Who knows what happened here but I will say if Hines wanted to come to Rutgers, and RU wasn’t interested, then that is a huge issue.
Yes it is. But look at it this way, if he came here, he’d probably be our best player, which means he’d be gone by next season.
It was reported on Richie and mikes podcast and it was pretty known within the HS community of basketball that he wanted to go to Rutgers
Rutgers like many other p4 schools wanted him to reclassify to 2026 and play a PG year because he has not dedicated a lot of time to his basketball development
seton hall was willing to take a chance and given where they were coming from last season it was a good one
If that is the case that is probably part of the problem when you have limited resources you have to take some more calculated risks
if we’re short on money you can’t pay 13 guys small amount you need to roll the dice and pay 8-9 guys and hope things work out
the 750k per player I think was the average between the 3 transfers and based on the timeline I think a lot of it went to Buchanan because he signed early and Francis
big problem with whatever amount Francis maybe more than fall because I’m pretty certain fall didn’t get much he was in the scrap heap of big men at the end of the window
Francis has family ties to a coach on staff which already was a red flag for me and is proving to be just as inefficient if not more than I was even worried he would be
That Fall is at Rutgers at all, even if he paid his own way, reflects only on the apparent moron of a coach we have.
who has confidence that if you increase the NIL budget that Pike and staff would know what to do. Nothing has shown they can do more with less, or ID talent. Hit rate is piss poor. So why give him a bigger budget to F up? To bring in more A-10 bench players as starters, NEC guys who belong in the MAAC at best, and stiffs who can't play at all?
Yeah that's going to make the position so appealing to the next coach. You guys really have no clue how low RU sits on the desirability list for coaches.
Its not appealing no matter what
We pretty much know Pike isnt the guy to fix this in the nil era
Just absolutely awful. Money will not help this staff.$750k avg per player!?
You stated that we had 750k each for 3 transfers, EACH(with emphasis and disdain on your face and in your voice). Buchanon, Francis, and Fall. Throw in some F words and this team sucks.
if now your saying that it’s changed all good. No matter how you divide up 2,250,000 mil with those 3 players it’s awful. NONE of them are worth any money at this level.
I don’t disagree but, I guess we would need relative context on the overall market to assess how egregious it was. How much, for instance, did Ogbole get? How much are the starters getting on A-10 rosters? If Fall is getting materially more than Ogbole something is wrong. Ogbole isn’t good but he wasn’t unplayable before his injury. Fall was deemed unplayable on 2 prior major conference rosters.
I understand your point but disagree on Ogbole. He is not a power 4 center and got destroyed by a freshman against seton hall. We will leave out Purdue and Michigan or any of his play for the last few years.
if you operate under the premise that most power 4 are working with 7-9 mil which once again is reported but not confirmed.
The top 2 guys on each team eating up 55-65 % of those dollars. That leaves roughly 3-3.5 mil to fill out the other 7-9 spots on a roster. Those completely align to our total dollar amount and what we put on the floor.
Take any power 4 team minus there top 2 players and those are the players we should be going after and signing.
Now if you are telling me that we are trying to sign them but they will not come ton Rutgers. Well, that’s a staff and coach problem and we need to make a change.
Oh I agree. I don’t think Ogbole is a power 4 level center either but perhaps the market for ANY center starts at 750k. That’s my point. We don’t have transparency into what others are being paid. Maybe a decent BIG level center costs 2M+ which would’ve exhausted our entire budget. If Ogbole was surrounded by much better players at other positions we would be able to “get by” with him more than we initially thought. He fouls too much but it’s not an automatic basket in the paint on halfcourt penetration. We’ve actually improved that a good deal this season from last it’s just we’ve gotten worse at so many other things.
Understand but let’s see how we “improved” on that when we actually are playing Big Ten players.
Ogbole had 1 dominant game against a small team.
Any way you look at it 2,250,000 for Francis, Buchanon, and Fall is flat out mal practice. NONE of them should be paid to play at this level.
Correct. My only point here is it’s at least plausible that we couldn’t in fact do much better at center with the resources we had available last year. Keeping Lathan instead of Ogbole wasn’t going to help us much if at all. There’s a reason Lathan doesn’t play all that much at Washington. His defense is really bad. Lathan supposedly was 800-900k range, right?
The bottom line circles back to your original point. Leaving any significant amount of money over to bring in another center (Fall) who couldn’t even find the court in garbage time at 2 prior programs was a mistake. To your point, if we applied 200-300k extra we could’ve had 2 better players than Buchanan and Fall.
That’s what they intended to spend on three transfers, that doesn’t mean these three specifically got that. I agree, even paying them $500k each isn’t justified imo, it’s just a very poorly constructed roster.
Understood or drop Fall, Francis, Ogbole and insert other bad player here. Now you have real money to sign a true value add center.
No matter how you look at it. Last year and this are complete examples of malpractice in talent evaluation and roster construction.
Reflecting back, it seems like Pike’s strategy early was to save up resources for multiple positions but then later on found out that we still didn’t have the resources left to get guys he really wanted. Probably better to take whatever is needed early to land a surefire impact play and if you run out of money figure it out as you go. This strategy resulted in us having nobody.
I don’t think you take a chance of having “no” center. That’s what I’m trying to say. Of all the decisions, that’s why keeping Ogbole was potentially the least stupid. Centers are probably the most overvalued of all. The Ogbole / Dortch combo is flawed but I do think if Buchanan, J Mike and Francis were replaced with Geo Baker, Caleb McConnell and Ron Harper Jr the team would be much better even with the center situation we have right now (by way of example).
On the flip side - I don’t think if you swapped Ogbole out for Cliff and then had to pick up even worse players than Buchanan, Francis and Zrno - we would be that much better. Cliff was much more effective when surrounded by guards like Paul and Geo as we saw in 2023-24.
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Or pay no one on the roster before you sign the “center “ or impact players.,
None of the guys on the roster would be paid by any other school so they are not going anywhere.
We both agree It was mishandled