I know in the world of NIL, tournaments like the Players Era become more attractive to schools looking for a quick payday. However, in the case of Rutgers, I believe that entering those tournaments just to get beat and lose any momentum in the season is not advantageous moving forward. Just a few years ago we were able to get 18-20 wins consistently year in and year out. Moving forward, Pike needs to consider the value of finding more of a balance in NIL exposure and playing winnable games. I see the value in playing high quality opponents but until we are equipped to play "primetime" we should focus on regaining our place in the NCAA tournament picture. There is no reason why we can't be in a similar position as Iowa or Ohio State. Curious to hear more thoughts on this.
How to gain wins moving forward
- Thread starter RUFan99
- Start date
Agreed. There needs to be a middle ground between Central Connecticut and Alabama, Houston, etc. Plenty of comparable programs in the Mid Atlantic region we can schedule early in the season.
instead of the constant parade of low majors at the RAC, wouldn't mind seeing one or two of our old Atlantic Ten foes. It would still be a game they should win, with a slight step up in competition. I understand you can't play five P5 out of conference games at home, but the Riders and Maines and Delaware States are getting tiresome
The problem is Pike takes so much of the early season to “figure things out”, longer than most coaches, and were ripe to be beat by any non cupcake.
Yes, need to hit the ground running. I like the idea of playing good competition early, but maybe as a scrimmage like St Johns in the past.
Non cupcake?
Nearly every year we lose to a cupcake.
Let’s actually beat all the cupcake for a year or two the worry about “resume” or better OOC teams.
Central Connecticut State
Kenner’s State
UMass
Princeton
Temple
Lafayette
DePaul
St. Bonaventure
remember how some were lauding the team this year because they performed well vs Towson in a scrimmage lol
and you can another one to that list next year...book it and his stans will excuse it as wait until February thats when Pike does his best work
Pikiel is using the cupcakes to develop players. Hopefully, he has enough $$$ so he can keep more players and get more experienced players in the portal so that we have a better chance to beat the more experienced teams. It would be foolish to avoid tournaments that pay players. We are lucky we got in the ones we did.
I rather keep playing the best teams we can!! Our OOC schedule is awful every year at home so stop ducking games and instead play the best and learn how to beat the best...home or a new coach
Building a resume requires actually winning games. It's all well and good to "schedule tougher", but where is the level of player required to win these tougher games coming from?
I am worn out hearing about Rutgers basketball. The one constant, Pike, has gotten a pass. He has won nothing!
Believe it or not, other teams lose to cupcakes too. When a team has a 90% chance of winning that means that they have a 10% chance of losing. Even playing against cupcakes most teams don’t have a better than 90% chance of winning. Simple probability would tell us that if any team including Rutgers plays seven cupcakes that it has a 90% chance of winning, the odds are better than 50% that it will lose one.
Of course. But it happens to Rutgers more often than the other power conference teams that are decent
Going back to my original post, the main contention is not over beating cupcakes but rather scheduling more teams that are the caliber of Rutgers especially early in the season given our history of slow starts. I am all for playing challenging teams but let’s do that later in the season. Villanova, Syracuse, Temple, Georgetown are good places to start.
No, I don’t remember that. I remember most of this board thinking the team would be in the 13-15 win range before the season started. Maybe a small % of people thought the team was better or significantly worse.
There was definitely scrimmage talk as if anything can be taken from those scrimmages