I see Ty Rogers left Illinois. That’s a big loss for them. He was one of their best players as a freshman and sophomore before redshirting two seasons (one for development and one for injury). He should have two years of eligibility left after a medical redshirt waiver, and he’s been at Illinois 4 years so he’ll have a degree now and could grad transfer. We should go after him. Chicago kid, and a heck of a good player. And seems like he was well liked at Illinois so would be a good locker room addition who knows what it takes to be a winning program.
Ty Rogers
- Thread starter Catmandoo78
- Start date
Really doubt it. Reportedly Illinois offered him 500k as an end of rotation role player and he passed. I’d be surprised if he can get much more than that. Hasn’t played in a game in two years and can’t shoot (or at least he couldn’t two years ago).
Besides I’m sure we can afford that? I mean we’ve brought in exclusively mid major guys without robust markets. Surely we haven’t spend much on the team yet.
Question is, do we have much to spend on the team? All we know is that before we started going into the portal we supposedly offered Singleton $1 mill so we know that was avail and not spent, Since then we have spent some in portal though as stated it was on second tier guys without a huge amount of competition, At this point, we tried on the guy from Harvard so we know that is likely still available but we have no idea how much that is, And se still have a number of spots to fill.
Anyone have a rough idea what NU is planning to spend? Portal acquisition is costing 65% more than last year… if we think we can skate by on less than $5M like we tired to do last year, we may be dead last in conference. (Compounded by the fact that we are acquiring 8 guys which is usually more expensive than retaining). We saw what the return on that was last year. I’m worried it’s only going to be worse this year with the price going up and we seemingly aren’t really competing with our conference peers for portal targets.
Or maybe every one of the Five-Letter-Acronym-Conference All Stars translates to big ten basketball and we threaded the needle perfectly?!
All kidding aside, the scariest part is most are one year transfers. So we’re doing this again in 340 days. Even if it goes perfectly, you gotta roll snake eyes again next season since we have very few guys even eligible to return.
I honestly think this may be the end for Collins at NU. I don’t think he gets fired or anything. I just think he looks around and realizes he’s got no chance to win at NU. And that the narrow path he took to win previously has been effectively closed off in today’s game. And he’ll decide to go try somewhere else that he thinks he can compete at. Looking at how many schools had to make risky mid major hires, I’d think he will easily find a good P4 job.
Right now, they don't have enough players to practice.
This is an 18+ B1G loss team, barring a major acquisition
I think we need several major acquisitions, right? If we added Martinelli to this team, do they lost 15 games again? Almost certainly. You’d need to add a couple no doubter Dudes to drag this roster to anything close to .500 in conference.
I have zero problem whatsoever about veteran, developed players from lower conferences. That's the way to win, not just jersey chasing castoffs from other name schools. 22 and 23 year olds can blossom into great players in any league. And I like the guys we've gotten so far, but we're still several good players short, including a centerpiece guy, and all the indications are the budget is thin. Maybe that's wrong and a whole second wave is coming.
Haha fair point. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic. I suppose it could all work out fine, even if that seems unlikely now. But the rosters incomplete. If we landed Ty Rogers or someone of that caliber I’d feel a lot better about what our floor and ceiling are.
I get the idea this is going to be an annual affair, and not just for NU. Look at Kentucky — they are cleaning house, and yet missing on most of their top targets.
And retention is not just related to payroll — the sense I get is that all players are being conditioned by their agent (and they ALL have agents) to just plan on entering the portal every season. It’s kind of like every NBA player being a free agent every season — why wouldn’t you test your market every season? All it takes is one suitor to up your financial deal every season.
This obviously undercuts the only “advantages” that NU had: ability to identify and develop talent over three or four seasons, the ability to build chemistry and a system, and the opportunity to get an NU degree for lower level contributors who have no NBA aspirations.
Not sure I see obvious path forward for NU other than collecting 7-8 mid-majors every off-season and hoping you hit on some hidden gems. I don’t see NU outbidding the field for experienced P-4 talent.
And retention is not just related to payroll — the sense I get is that all players are being conditioned by their agent (and they ALL have agents) to just plan on entering the portal every season. It’s kind of like every NBA player being a free agent every season — why wouldn’t you test your market every season? All it takes is one suitor to up your financial deal every season.
This obviously undercuts the only “advantages” that NU had: ability to identify and develop talent over three or four seasons, the ability to build chemistry and a system, and the opportunity to get an NU degree for lower level contributors who have no NBA aspirations.
Not sure I see obvious path forward for NU other than collecting 7-8 mid-majors every off-season and hoping you hit on some hidden gems. I don’t see NU outbidding the field for experienced P-4 talent.
You’re right that it’s not only NU, but that doesn’t mean it’s a thing good programs do. Look at which big ten teams have done a really good job retaining their players this offseason: Michigan, Purdue, MSU, and Illinois have all kept their core (the ones with remaining eligibility). Those teams will all be at top of conference this season and not coincidentally.
Kentucky is in a spiral and their coach will be fired a year from now.
it's hard for me to believe Hodge will be anywhere near 100%. I'm thinking more like Barnhizer's last year and Hodge isn't Barnhizer.
And what do they all have in common? Plenty of money to keep guys around that they want
He is a frosh coming off of a significant injury Counting on him for much at this point is foolish,
Sure. But that’s how the game works. We can’t just throw up our hands and say “oh well!”
We can only work with what we have and look for areas we can gain a strategic advantage to help overcome what we do not have
The part I don't understand is the "do not have". Why doesnt MBB "have"? This is a bad variation of this old quote, but it feels like 'billions for buildings, but not a penny for players'.
Our peers can do it. We can do it.
NU has the smallest (by far) fan base of anyone in the BIG. The big money donors we have don't seem to feel that is how they want to spend their money (maybe because they want their donations to be tax deductible and not sure NIL contributions are) and there are just not enough of the smaller guys willing to donate amounts that will move the needle. That being the case, where is the money coming from?
Increase your fund raising activities. None of us know exactly who they hit up, how often, or even what their views are on the Athletic department. We just assume there is no interest and also we are pretty certain the smaller guys are not hit up often if at all. It’s a tight wire to walk between being aggressive and not being an irritant.
Well, as a "smaller donor " (I'm 5'8"), I am not clear where to donate now that we kicked Jacob Schmidt to the curb.
I'm sure a lot of $ went to pay off Pat Paterno due to the Shill/Gagg comedy show.
We have a top 50 coach, but he can't perform miracles. Better figure it out
I dunno, I've never donated beyond the required "donations" for tickets and they send me mail and e-mail ( and recently even cold calls) all year long and every year looking for donations. If they're pursuing a peon like me, I can only imagine how hard they chase people with actual money.
I must be an even bigger peon than you as all I get is the email for the annual athletic department donation.
I know that most schools require a significant NIL donation in order to purchase season tickets. I have a friend who’s a season ticket holder for basketball down in Rantoul (Champagne) and he said that he had to donate $2500/seat before he was even allowed to buy his season tickets (and that wasn’t for any sort of premium access or anything, just plain old tickets).
This shouldn’t be that hard of a sell to Ryans and their ilk. What good are the nice facilities if we can’t field a decent team? Nobody care about how nice a court or stadium is if the team is winning 25% of their conference games and is irrelevant.
This shouldn’t be that hard of a sell to Ryans and their ilk. What good are the nice facilities if we can’t field a decent team? Nobody care about how nice a court or stadium is if the team is winning 25% of their conference games and is irrelevant.
Are you suggesting adding an NIL-specific bump to season tickets in addition to the existing "donation"? $2500 a seat would be a great motivator for me to cancel my season tickets and just buy single tickets from an online vendor.
When you can buy tickets cheaper from an online broker than you can by bring a STH, then something is wrong with your pricing. I am not talking about games with Boston University, I am talking about B1G games.
I am all for NU leaning into dynamic pricing. Let’s face it, there is a finite number of NU hoops fans. Price in tiers based on historical demand. Basically charge a nominal fee for the Non-conference games against non. P4 teams and significantly raise the price against the IL, PUR, MSU, IN of the world. Design it to insure all the opposing fans are paying much more than the STH is on a pro-rata basis. Use the fact of having so many alum of opposing B1G schools in the Chicago area to your advantage by squeezing then for more money than STH. Instead we actually encourage all but the first 3 rows of the Upper deck to be picked up by single game sales to other schools that take over the entire section. It makes no sense. If a small portion of seats don’t sell, fine. Better than having some Hillbilly from Bloomington making it miserable for STH’s at a lower price than the STH paid.
Most schools do this. I don’t get why we don’t. It wouldn’t hurt attendance; you know which games will have huge demand.
I'm not sure I follow you, but that's probably more of a me problem. I assume that most of the single game tickets on secondary markets are put there by season ticket holders either operating as scalpers generally or more likely paying for their season tickets by selling a few of the games that are in-demand per your comment about opposing alumni. I think you're suggesting that NU put big bumps on single game tickets it sells, and it could do that and I'd have zero problem with it - seems like a good idea for the reasons you've mentioned - but I'm not sure what the percentage of those tickets is compared to my assumption. I guess that the worse your product, the more season tickets holders cancel, the bigger NU's market share is for a la carte sales.