Pikiell seems like a good dude and is hard not to pull for. Really could use an offensive guru to help out. 45 points @ home. 
I think the offensive struggles are much more about the reality of what he can recruit at Rutgers than his ability to coach offense.
You have to prioritize something if your recruiting has a ceiling.
There are several elite defensive players on the roster. There are no elite offensive players on the roster.
Pikiell’s “You always bring up those positives, I appreciate that” upon being reminded they’ve lost four of five was priceless. Funny without being excessively vindictive.
Agreed. And seemed like he sorta misunderstood the question, but still so perfect to hear him saying the offensive identity as “well, make free throws, score enough points to win.”
I would guess that there’s a Beilein-like practice split as well where defense is just drilled more
An Offensive guru might be able to recruit an elite offensive player. Or 2. Maybe. That was a very tough watch for the Rutgers fans last night. 45 points. @ home. Hypothermia inducing.
Yeah, I get that but at that level if you try to recruit all-around players you are often left with very average players. The program has an identity and it recruits to it.
It’s no different than the degree to which Fran recruits to skill and shooting offensively.
Most of the middle teams in the Big Ten are going in one direction or the other. PSU and Iowa with offense. Rutgers and Wisconsin with defense.
The rosters are bad on the opposite end because they literally just don’t have the players to be good there.
RU situation made even worse by injury to be fair.
IDK. Pikiell’s offense has been horrendous his whole career. I don’t think there’s some great offense ready to be unleashed at Rutgers. But I’m also a Rutgers hater
I’m just saying that playing offense with Cliff Omoruyi, Paul Mulcahy and Caleb McConnell is kind of like playing defense with Jett Howard and Hunter Dickinson.
I agree he does seem like a good dude and easy to root for. It’s refreshing listening to him talk after a game compared to Izzo. It’s not hard but Pikiell was able to give Michigan credit while also pointing out that they need to make free throws and shoot better. Both can be true. Izzo, on the other hand, would have talked about strange lineups, and how the schedule wasn’t fair to them, and they didn’t have enough practice time.
Other than the fact that these things are often a slow build, I don’t quite get what the impediments are for Rutgers long term. The state school in a densely populated state where hoop is popular. Is it just a matter of starting to win and becoming a destination for the better players, or something more than that?
IMO, coastal fans generally aren’t as invested as midwest/southern fans, particularly for college sports. And Rutgers is not even a particularly wealthy university in the context of the B10. I think Rutgers has the second smallest endowment in the B10 ahead of Nebraska? So I think the resources just aren’t really there.
I seem to forget between match-ups that Omoruyi’s offensive game consists almost entirely of “explode at the rim” and that anything more than five feet away is a range issue. Once U-M started making enough shots to starve transition opps, he was much more manageable and less scary.