I would hope that in the case of Doumbia at least, who is visiting, there was at least a soft clearance from admissions to even get to this stage. But you never know, could always have another Malcolm Bernard situation. Though, I’ve heard that our admissions has gotten better with this sort of thing since then.
80's fan came on here and explicitly stated admissions was no longer an issue.
I agree with you here. I feel like we can get some decent "step up" candidates from lower leagues ( I know Philly thinks its a bad formula but not sure he has ever heard of Jordan King, Bigelow, Quinn???) with competitive NIL.
The difference between us and P5 though is P5 wants to get a full roster of big time guys and/or their version of big time guy is like a 5 start recruit who we were never going to have a chance with anyway. We’re looking at only 1-2 true impact level players. So while P5 has more money to spend, it’s spread out over more players, whereas we can go all in on 1-2 players and therefore we can spend more money per big time guy. But we can’t do it for more than 1-2 so we have to be smart with whoever we go after and be very confident that they’ll be a stud here. A back court of Rice and Simmons would absolutely fit the bill. And I totally agree with you. Having go to big time guys will also make the other average/above average guys on our roster better because less pressure and focus will be on them. I definitely think guys like Tyne, Walz, and AP can play. But they aren’t main guy material.
Optics has gone out the window now that college basketball is basically semi-professional. The school opted into the house settlement, which tells me that we’re serious about basketball success to some reasonable degree. Getting 7 year, 25 year old guys comes with the territory. Personally, I don’t mind it. Our academic reputation as a school has never been better. Bringing in 1-2 guys a year who have, goodness knows what kind of transcript, isn’t going to change that. I know you’ll agree with me on this, but the benefit these players can bring in enhancing our basketball and consequently our school profile outweighs whatever optics letting a guy come play here in his 7th year would be. I bet the admin recognizes that too.
The landscape is a lot different now than it was 5, 10, & 25 years ago. Not much I could see our admin doing differently other than lowering admission standards for kids. No one 10+ years ago was going to transfer with 1 season of eligibility left and then have to sit out a year first before playing their last year, which is what the rule used to be. That only left players who transferred as a grad student to play with one year (rare instances 2 years) left. We had no problem bringing in guys with 1 year left like Kwesi Abakah, Jordan Madrid-Andrews, and Noah Yates who come to mind. There was the one instance where admissions denied Bernard. Don’t think it’s fair comparison to say UR didn’t recognize it all those years ago because pre-COVID and before the sit our 1 year transfer rule went away, granting JUCO players another eligibility year, and NIL, this was never viewed as a possibility to recognize to begin with.
I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not, but that’s sort of my point. Maybe other P5 schools offer him 400-500K. Is that reasonable to say? If we offered him $750K and he came here, he would be a difference maker immediately. We go all in on 1-2 impact guys while P5s might hedge their bets with them a little bit because they have so many other impact guys they are targeting/want a roster full of impact guys and need to disperse the money more evenly.
would you advise your high major son with NBA aspirations who starts at Maryland in the Big 10 and is wanted by everybody to play for ANY team in the A10? is that in his best interest? never mind a team that won 8 D1 games last year and who will use most of their NIL on you so they can't fill holes around you.
This comment misstates my belief. I did say I am not going to get excited about about guys coming from bottom dwellars from much lower level conferences who happen to score some (based on stats and no actual knowledge). Dusan being the example I gave. Quinn for example does not meet this definition since he clearly did way more than score at Lafayette averaging 7+ rebounds and 4+ assists the year before he joined us. In addition, we didn't need him to be an alpha dog player - - we had a very specific role we needed to fill and he fit the bill to a T! King was an outstanding defensive player and turned out to be an alpha, but again we had better to surround him with.
Yes, I am both disappointed and concerned - - about this specifically and the state of the program generally.
I think you’re focusing too much on the idea it has to be Rodney Rice, which is not what I or 23 are suggesting. Rice looks to be out of our league and will be likely asking for NIL north of $1 million. I’m saying we should be involved more in situations where the quality of player is closer to a Rodney Rice caliber than closer to a development player with offers from random low major schools.
Yep, could be anyone. lot of p5 type of players that maybe were stuck behind really good guys. Of course was hoping that was GW3 this past season, but maybe a guy with more production yet was only getting 10-15 minutes due to crowded roster.
you literally said "... we have to be smart with whoever we go after and be very confident that they’ll be a stud here. A back court of Rice and Simmons would absolutely fit the bill".
The response was more supporting what 23 was saying about Rice, “Again, a Rodney Rice type next to a Buddy Simmons type gives you an A+ A10 guard room” rather than stating my own belief that we have to go after him. Although, you never know unless you try, but I ultimately agree with you that the ship has sailed.
