2024-25 Roster Thread

MarylandRamFan · Apr 17, 2024

TampaKAP said:
For the life of me I don't know why the A10,AAC, MV and MW cant see its in there best long term interest to form some type of schedule collaboration

What about targeting P5 teams that are not top tier, but would represent a good, solid road win? Northwestern, Nebraska, Maryland…….teams like that wouldn’t be interested in a game with the Rams? Also the MW teams would seem to be good targets. Also SMU, Stanford in the ACC? I have to believe we could identify 5-6 good solid opponents that could enhance our resume.
We don’t seem to have much luck in the Holiday tournaments. Close, but no cigar.

RAMification · Apr 17, 2024

RAMification said:
From my perspective it's time to move on from the DeLoach issue. Personally I was a DeLoach fan but he chose to move on from a good situation at VCU, made a poor decision on secondary school selection, and likely did not have a strong desire to be a Ram once again. Coach Odom and his staff will do what's in the best interest of this program. He has demonstrated that during his short tenure here. If we can hold serve in terms of player retention and can add a few nice pieces we will be fine. Hopefully we are on the cusp of some good news on the recruiting front.

Sorry for the placement of my post. It was meant to be a stand alone post vs. reply.

Mr X · Apr 17, 2024

RAMification said:
Sorry for the placement of my post. It was meant to be a stand alone post vs. reply.

We are still at 10.

rambunctiousrowdyram · Apr 17, 2024

MarylandRamFan said:
What about targeting P5 teams that are not top tier, but would represent a good, solid road win? Northwestern, Nebraska, Maryland…….teams like that wouldn’t be interested in a game with the Rams? Also the MW teams would seem to be good targets. Also SMU, Stanford in the ACC? I have to believe we could identify 5-6 good solid opponents that could enhance our resume.
We don’t seem to have much luck in the Holiday tournaments. Close, but no cigar.

Maryland played us once at DC. They lost to us and doubt they’ll entertain that again, Honestly most of the P5 won’t entertain our call. Ed is pretty open about this. They call hundreds of schools. They make it known they’ll play P5 anywhere. They get nothing. Plus schools still think of us as havoc which they apparently want no part of playing styles like that.

share the ball · Apr 17, 2024

reality is we are not a program that has a reputation any longer that will attract P5s to want to play us on a neutral court

we need a tougher OOC (i.e. a few more Tier 1 and Tier 2 games) and the easiest way is find another top mid major that you can reasonably expect to be top 50-100 NET and play them on the road - add that to the annual quality tournament we play on a neutral court and maybe one Tier 1-2 home game in the OOC and we have an OOC that gives us a real chance to be an at-large tourney team with a win or three against the Tier 1 and 2s

VCU has never had a problem getting up for road games against good teams and even a close loss is better than Tier 4 victories when our conference schedule does not give us 10 Tier 1 games like the avg P5 gets

Odom needs to show he has scheduling chops

go rams and odom

TampaKAP · Apr 17, 2024

MarylandRamFan said:
What about targeting P5 teams that are not top tier, but would represent a good, solid road win? Northwestern, Nebraska, Maryland…….teams like that wouldn’t be interested in a game with the Rams? Also the MW teams would seem to be good targets. Also SMU, Stanford in the ACC? I have to believe we could identify 5-6 good solid opponents that could enhance our resume.
We don’t seem to have much luck in the Holiday tournaments. Close, but no cigar.

20 games...and possibly 22 for some on the horizon shrinks the P5 pool. If we could get some of the other leagues I mentioned on board, we could possibly get some nice neural location double headers with P5 schools. For Example, VCU/Georgia and South Carolina/Drake. Also, we should look at the B/E for some H&H

RowdyPkunk · Apr 17, 2024

TampaKAP said:
For the life of me I don't know why the A10,AAC, MV and MW cant see its in there best long term interest to form some type of schedule collaboration

Right?

Imagine if... in addition to the MTEs that just about every team is a part of in November.... if in Mid/Late December there was another MTE of sorts at different host sites for 2-3 days.

Kinda like how in 2010-11.... we had our own little MTE of sorts where we played Wofford & New Hampshire on back to back days at the STU.

You could probably set up a couple Friday-Sundays where you get a bunch of teams together from those 4 conferences & play 2 games over a period of 3 days against people from different conferences.

Dr Joe · Apr 17, 2024

RAMification said:
From my perspective it's time to move on from the DeLoach issue. Personally I was a DeLoach fan but he chose to move on from a good situation at VCU, made a poor decision on secondary school selection, and likely did not have a strong desire to be a Ram once again. Coach Odom and his staff will do what's in the best interest of this program. He has demonstrated that during his short tenure here. If we can hold serve in terms of player retention and can add a few nice pieces we will be fine. Hopefully we are on the cusp of some good news on the recruiting front.

I loved JJ as a potential four who could use his feet and general athletic ability to both score and get rebounds. But like AA said he got into foul trouble when covering the kind of player we actually need, that is a solid five who can establish position with weight and strength. I did love how Tobi learned to screen for guards driving to the basket. Someone with the lower body strength of MO is what we need but I fear our history seems to make that more a dream than a reality. Of course, Wheeler was that guy but clearly did not understand how to use his body without fouling out in minutes. Get that big guy and it would open up shots from Zeb, Bam and anyone else spotting up. GO RAMS.

VRam · Apr 17, 2024

Tobi is the best.

Deloach was/is not the best.

balldontlie · Apr 17, 2024

TampaKAP said:
For the life of me I don't know why the A10,AAC, MV and MW cant see its in there best long term interest to form some type of schedule collaboration

This is the way. Of course p5 doesn’t want to play us, they don’t gain anything from it. We’ve historically played pretty well against big teams, and even when we haven’t won we’ve kept it close for the most part.

Half-baked Mcbride · Apr 17, 2024

MarylandRamFan said:
What about targeting P5 teams that are not top tier, but would represent a good, solid road win? Northwestern, Nebraska, Maryland…….teams like that wouldn’t be interested in a game with the Rams? Also the MW teams would seem to be good targets. Also SMU, Stanford in the ACC? I have to believe we could identify 5-6 good solid opponents that could enhance our resume.
We don’t seem to have much luck in the Holiday tournaments. Close, but no cigar.

I like the MR era scheduling philosophy of "try to schedule the top 1 or 2 teams in a lesser conference"....so that coupled with the "lesser P5" schools might be the best way to go. We might also have to consider going on the road for those....HandH is a tough sell for some of those P5 AD's

As for holiday tournaments? I kind of hate them...but ONLY because VCU has flagged and failed in (checks notes) EVERY HOLIDAY TOURNAMENT WE'VE EVER PLAYED!!

WillWeaverRVA · Apr 17, 2024

Half-baked Mcbride said:
I like the MR era scheduling philosophy of "try to schedule the top 1 or 2 teams in a lesser conference"....so that coupled with the "lesser P5" schools might be the best way to go.

It's certainly not a bad philosophy if it actually works out. Winning the McNeese game actually would have made a pretty big difference for us (they finished #56 in the NET) - beat them and Memphis and there's a fairly solid OOC (outside the holiday tournament, though that Iowa State game was absolutely winnable and we probably do win it with Sean and Bam in the lineup), even with the Norfolk State loss.

bighornn · Apr 17, 2024

RAMification said:
Hopefully we are on the cusp of some good news on the recruiting front.

That is likely the case. However, are there more ready-to-Ramble guards on the open market than Shulga, Jackson, Bamisile (and perhaps The Brick house)? Are there any better prospects out there than Belle, Billups, Jennings? And how much improvement could there be in the paint from Fermin and Lawal? How much is too much?

thrashsoundly · Apr 17, 2024

TampaKAP said:
For the life of me I don't know why the A10,AAC, MV and MW cant see its in there best long term interest to form some type of schedule collaboration

Agree The scheduling conundrum is just ridiculous. There are plenty of teams in this same boat that have a hard time getting teams to come play at their gym. They need to get over themselves and just schedule eachother. All of the conferences right at or just below the P5 should do this: A10, MWC, MVC, AAC, WCC etc. There are plenty of opportunities for resume building games just from those conferences. Odom should swallow his pride and schedule a H-H with USU. Now that's a top tier matchup coming off of last season.

The MWC already has a scheduling alliance with the MVC, but that only gives 1 game, home or away each year.

SteveMM · Apr 17, 2024

You'll all recall that the A10 and Mountain West agreed to do a "challenge" series. IIR we were set to play UNLV, but I could be off on that. The agreement was killed by COVID and not revived. All mid-majors struggle to schedule quality opponents. This sort of things seems like a complete no brainer to me.