Lets face facts/history
If JMike wants to stay, Pike will keep him, probably at the same NIL he got this year
Keepers for next year
- Thread starter RUdepressed
- Start date
If JMike wants to stay, Pike will keep him, probably at the same NIL he got this year
Agreed - Ive kind of been thinking of the money in two pots. Supposedly we gave out around 4M last year. Because of his height and paper scoring metric, Grant will get a bigger offer somewhere and he’d be wise to take it now. I see him leaving and we won’t continue paying the guys who couldn’t help at all - Fall, Ware, Denis. Hopefully the combination of those “salaries” can be shifted to appropriately bump Tariq, Buchanan and Mark to a fair level for retention. My thinking is there is no way all the rest will be looking to stay so once we have a sense of who is moving on, it’ll likely be realistic to modestly increase one or two of the others from their current year pay level and stay within the 2025-26 pay total (or ballpark) for the retained players.
Whatever Zinn has raised above this 4-6M give or take - could go towards 3 high caliber players that fill specific needs on the roster.
There is a 0% chance Pike wants Davis gone.
Next year Davis would be a graduating senior who was only at 1 school for all 4 years.
No way Pike doesn't highly value that and promote that narrative.
"In an era of mercenaries, Davis stayed. Thats how we want to run the Rutgers program blah blah"
In the era of mercs we value losing seasons. I wonder how much money JMike made at Rutgers? More than he would have made at any other power conference school?
Fans do too. I want JMike to graduate a Scarlet Knight.
Do we need a PG? Assuming Lino, Jones, Powers, Francis, and JMike all stay, that’s a pretty strong group to spread among the 1 and the 2.
5 - starter- transfer, backup - Ogbole
4 - starter - transfer/Buchanan, backup - Buchanan/transfer
3 - starter - transfer/Jones/Buchanan - backup, Zrno, Nwuli, Wooten
2 - starter - Powers/Jones, backup Francis, JMike, Wooten
1 - starter - Francis/Lino, backup JMike
Not sure where Wooten fits nor Jones (is he a 2 or a 3).
I would start Francis and Lino, but pretty much agree with you that we don't need a point guard like many on here think
if we dont get another major impact guard we are in trouble for next year...power is not a starter and neither is jones.
I’m hoping for a physical, defensive wing with handling skills. I think we could get by in the backcourt with a Caleb type whose lower class offense metrics don’t necessarily pop out therefore keeping the price down. His handle was good enough to support Francis in a 1-2 punch for stretches.
I’m hoping we spend the money wisely on a forceful center and power forward who leave no questions on D with potential to do damage if not accounted for on offense. The wing and power forward could possibly possess a blend of these skills. One of them needs point forward like attributes.
My thinking is we can probably only afford 2.5 players who aren’t long shots to come in as impact players so we should look for guys who can fill multiple holes on our roster at once.
This looks like a fantasy baseball keeper league keep who you can and hope for the best it all comes.down to who is left available and how much you have to spend.
Biggest win of the year and 2 of our "must keep and make them starters next year":
Mark and Powers combined for 23min and 0pts
So....ya...we need 4 starters for next year assuming Francis stays.
Mark and Powers combined for 23min and 0pts
So....ya...we need 4 starters for next year assuming Francis stays.
Rutgers needs size and scoring from the power forward and center positions.
I don’t recall anyone saying “must make them starters”. Your far too caught up on starter / non-starter, anyway. Basketball is a game of match ups. NIL decisions should be made based on projected average minutes played. Right now - Lino is a not a zone breaker type player. Minn wasn’t going to be a good match up for him in a tight game (he feasted on garbage time points in the first game), That doesn’t take away from the things he’s been able to do though in some of the other games. He’s not a penciled in starter but definitely a kid with potential whose shown he can be a good contributor.
SGs like Powers (and Zrno) are a dime a dozen. They absolutely would provide more value to us breaking in a frosh SG (especially considering the best frosh in the class are already committed). Probably each should be offered 100K more than the going rate for first year players. Not more than that. And the marginal difference in what you can otherwise get with that 200K for someone better in the open market isn’t going to warrant “saving” that money. We can’t have walk on level filling spots 8-12. Look at Minnesota and that’s with everything going right on a few of them. You need a minimum 10 “real” players to scrimmage effectively and at least one more in case of injuries.
Aside from Francis there is no one more valuable on the team.
If Powers stays 4 years he'll be a top 20 all time Rutgers player. Keep him, Buchanon, Francis and JMike, Ogbole, and no one else. I think everyone is underestimating how much better each of these kids can become with another year's experience. Just look at Francis this year. No one expected this.
If you listened to the latest podcast, Richie mentioned we are looking for a center, a wing, and a point guard.
Was part of a D2 staff for a team that went 25-3, won the league and the league tournament, and finished in the top 5 or 6 nationally. Dylan Grant would not have started for us.
Any roster that haas any reliance on buchanon or zrno is in for a bad result. Both built for the out of conference schedule.
Will staff Be fooled by this late spurt by Ogbole? Lol he did play as well as any Portal add we could afford, but def Can’t trust him to play starter minutes
No one on the roster is a must keep, but we definitely need to keep some kind of nucleus. It’s clear it takes a while for players to learn our schemes. Spending 500k on a new bench-level player over a JMike, Ogbole I think would be a major waste of resources. All I know is we had two guys that were consistently players that could be in our closing lineup by the end of the season, and luckily it seems those are the two who most want to return in Tariq and Darren. That’s a good start. I’d love if we got a big time wing, big time C and big time guard but unfortunately that’d probably cost our whole budget, so we probably have to settle for two of those types (one must be a C) and then hopefully have a solid other person to help out. I keep going back to the thought of if we had Jadrian Tracey instead of Zrno. IMO that’s at least two wins right there. A trustworthy C is probably also two wins and boom, we are just outside the bubble. I think this is a realistic expectation with how we will attack the portal and what that can yield for us.
There is little evidence to indicate this
The only evidence I've seen is that while the team improved over the season, most of these guys are role players. The roster needs some turnover and Pike needs to be aggressive in the portal.
Bingo, 100%. I don’t mind if Buchanan, JMike, Powers, Zrno, Mark (likely gone already), come back but ideally they would be coming off the bench due to upgraded starters playing ahead of them with Francis acquired from an aggressive portal haul. Some of these guys can play on a Big 10 team, just as role players off the bench. We shall see how much money Keli raised and what level of players GM Sullivan can buy with it from this “increased” NIL. We still don’t know if they have $6 Mil, $8 Mil, $10 mil, just that they “met their goal” in raising NIL funds. Interesting offseason ahead.
Grant needs to go. He’s not cut out for this level.
Mark is a very obvious keep if we can. So is Powers.
I don’t think Powers is an obvious - let’s pay to keep - type. He’s one to keep if he doesn’t cost a ton more than bringing in a new frosh or low major with questionable D and metrics. Just so many shooting guards out there. Lino I agree. He should be paid with an expectation that he’ll be logging a lot of minutes (not starting but playing a big role).
Yes they did - and then talked about Caleb and Paul as the prototypes. I’d love to fill that role with a hybrid of those two (which ultimately means picking up a Pg/wing in one). We’re not going to get Paul’s efficiency and court vision, plus Caleb’s defense in one guy (probably too expensive) - but I’d happily take good but not quite Caleb defender, lower shooting efficiency (brings down cost), plus Paul’s court vision. The key would be someone physical enough to play the 3 or 4 in the rotation based on match up.
The “wing” need in my opinion ought to be a replacement for Grant. Every guy has off games here and there but he’s consistently shown very little ability to help us on either end. He’s not a starter caliber but was obviously paid to be one this year.
According to Richie, Grant was paid less than $500k, is that really starter $? $400K is a tenth of LYs roster, give or take. He obviously hasnt earned a big increase, but as a bench piece why not bring back a kid like Grant who will be better his upperclassmen years than he is as a freshman soph that had to play more than he should have. I do think we move on, but at 5% of the roster cost Id have no problem w him back.
Dortch plays D and will be dirt cheap. He doesn’t fall in the same category as the others you mentioned. He’s worth keeping for “frosh level dollars” to have the experience.
If Pike is to have any chance - one of his toughest decisions that must be made is letting Grant go. There’s no way we can match what he got this year when he was expected to not only start but be the feature player on the team.
How can that be if we spent 4M? Who did it go to?
But even still - no, I don’t even think he’s worth 400-500K. He’s not going to want to ride the bench and if he’s playing meaningful minutes - we’re going be in big trouble again.
Think about it - what exactly does he do well? He’s a 28% career 3 point shooter. 44% overall from the field is also poor for a forward whose not a go to player being asked to make things happen (he proved without a doubt that cannot be his role pretty early on). He can’t handle the ball at all (he’s a turnover machine whenever he tries to put the ball on the floor and loses it routinely in transition). And he’s a below average rebounder for his size / position. He hasn’t demonstrated noticable distribution skills (18 total assists on the season and 22 for his career). And so on. There’s really just nothing to point to right now. Sure - anyone could take major strides year over year, but wow. I do not understand those TKR guys. Thinking it’s ridiculous for us to consider paying guys like Lino or Tariq an extra 100K or so , but we should shell out close to 500K for Grant to play because Pike feels bad for him?
Last edited:
I’m ready to move on but why would Grant even want to stick around? He was handed the keys two years ago and has seen his role rightfully diminished. He strikes me as a guy who doesn’t love ball anymore or at least wasn’t having fun. He showed very little emotion all year. He might embrace a new environment to finish up as opposed to no longer even being a starter as a senior.
He’ll be a junior. But the point still stands. It’d be hard to argue he showed anything even resembling “flashes” of being able to take big strides next season. His higher scoring games were simply a result of making a couple catch and shoot baskets / situational put backs but his metrics on the season are poor. Just hasn’t shown anything at all.
I think the $ for the team was pretty spread out w Buchan around $700k and Francis the biggest question, I had figured $350k, but have even seen that he got more than double that, so who knows.
I agree, he's very limited, I said it before the year when everyone was excited by him. That said, we've suffered through his poor years, this is when you are supposed to benefit from upper class development. What will that look like? No idea, but at least he has the body type. Not a starter, but did give 7 and 3ish in conference, in like 21 min a game. Remember when he averaged 7 or 8 boards a game early on? What happened to that guy? He went away as soon as Tariq emerged.
Pikiell said in his press conference that JMike will graduate. I wonder if that means he’ll be back next year or that he will be able to graduate early (and possibly transfer this year).
I’m beginning to wonder if Pikiell will bring anyone back next year. It might be a complete program reset.
I’m beginning to wonder if Pikiell will bring anyone back next year. It might be a complete program reset.
I hope the irony isn't lost on anyone else:
"Mark and Powers are critical to the future of the program. They have potential. Need to keep those players around. Pike needs years to develop his guys. Think how much better they'll be with continuity".
Ok sure.
Grant - can't be run out fast enough after coming into the season as our best player
Davis - lost starting spot and should only return as end of the bench option
Ogbole - season was largely a disaster because he had to start and actually play
Dortch - barely in the rotation/end of the bench guy
Not saying they are lost causes.
But Pike's recent track record doesnt really endear loads of confidence in Mark amd Powers and Nwuli turning into stars.
"Mark and Powers are critical to the future of the program. They have potential. Need to keep those players around. Pike needs years to develop his guys. Think how much better they'll be with continuity".
Ok sure.
Grant - can't be run out fast enough after coming into the season as our best player
Davis - lost starting spot and should only return as end of the bench option
Ogbole - season was largely a disaster because he had to start and actually play
Dortch - barely in the rotation/end of the bench guy
Not saying they are lost causes.
But Pike's recent track record doesnt really endear loads of confidence in Mark amd Powers and Nwuli turning into stars.
Unless Brandin goes to Pitt, he’s “expecting”Tariq back at minimum. He slipped in the Minn presser and said - we’re lucky he’s a junior and has another year. Or something like that. Doesn’t mean a bidding war circumstance won’t arise but Pike has clearly been thinking with Tariq in the plan to this point based on that IMO.
You tend to focus way too much on the paper stats. We, quite literally, had no front court. Someone was ultimately going to situationally grab a few boards and put the ball through the net since even when your losing by 20 the game still extends for 40 minutes.
Our front court entailed Buchanan shifting from position to position 3-5 basically to match up with the best of the opponent on both ends because of how limited our options were. With Buchanan, there’s far more upside because in his case, the issues are decision making / carelessness. You can hope that another offseason in the system can help with that some. He’s not a clear starter type either but rather someone who can be viewed as capable of giving solid minutes at every position other than point situationally - ideally maybe 22ish mpg.
Grant just isn’t this. Most of his points were scored on occasionally made 3s and on garbage time. 3 rpg is horrendous for someone at his position.
Agreed on Powers. Lino has shown true flashes of some differentiating skills. Since he can handle the ball i think he’s worth a bit of a premium.
Since speculation of “pay levels” and how those are defined (is it based on starter/non-starter, projected minutes, etc.) are largely unknown - I think we should adopt a WAB like philosophy for assessing player “worth”. Instead of “wins above the bubble” it would be “pay above going frosh rate”. Now obviously a handful of elite frosh recruits are priced differently but I’m talking about the rest. Basically - whatever that rate is for a first year unknown player (I doubt it varies much 3 star, vs low 4 star, etc.). In my opinion, Powers is worth no more than “frosh rate +75K”.
I think a portion of our fanbase that rallied around beating bottom feeders and these players as being the future are going to be in for a big surprise next year. A whole new look is coming and it needs to.