Three Thoughts From The Weekend: The Big Ten season, the new year and more

GoldandBlack.com’s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind. In this week’s edition, we discuss Purdue basketball’s Big Ten season, Zach Edey and more.

ON PURDUE AND THE BIG TEN

Tomorrow night at Maryland, top-ranked Purdue re-opens the Big Ten season in a game reflective of the whole conference season to come.

The Terrapins are mediocre, like most of the rest of the league, but capable, and the Boilermakers will step onto their court the way the pig arrives at the luau. All these crowds on the road, they show up expecting deep down their team to lose, but wanting to be there just in case. There’s a buzz. That’s the burden Purdue has earned and one it, yes, still must live up to. Purdue’s already dropped a road game it should have won — credit Northwestern, sure, but only to a point — and there are plenty of such mines lying in the sand ahead. Purdue’s got to either side-step or diffuse enough of them to start stacking championships. That’s the standard now. There are no underdogs here anymore.

There are going to be games where the opponent just plays better — that’s basketball — but all the things that should really matter for Purdue, the experience, the depth and mental toughness that should come from its past, the time is now. So far, so good, but the road in the Big Ten is different.

The reality is that Purdue is better than it was last season, the league is worse, and Purdue won it by three games last season. But you take nothing for granted.

Honestly, it’s more about Purdue than everybody else.

ON ZACH EDEY

Good for you, Zach Edey.

These extended autograph/selfie sessions he (and teammates) have conducted after these last two games — buy games attended by tons of kids — have been a spectacle, but the spectacle shouldn’t overshadow the humanity of it.

He’s not standing out there in a sweaty uniform taking photos and signing thousands, quite literally, of items for money at a time in college sports history when he could be. He’s not leaving the arena at midnight after a 7 p.m. game because he and his family have nothing better to do. He’s not doing it because he knows he’ll get Twitter love for it.

He’s doing it because he’s a good, grateful dude, the humblest star you’ll ever come across. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but modern sports culture and its sometimes-complicated interface between gen-pop and athletes does not always breed a ton of humility and gratitude. But Edey’s not a typical case, never has been.

Purdue’s so fortunate to have him.

ON THE NEW YEAR

This 2024 calendar year is going to be a big one for the sports we cover closest — football and men’s basketball.

This is Matt Painter’s program’s best shot ever, in my opinion — and there have been a few real ones — to do something really prominent on a national scale, that one box that needs to be checked before the court of public opinion will accept the Boilermakers as one of the finest, most consistent programs in America, and the model for success it really ought to be viewed as and would be now if not for basketball culture’s Final Four-itis.

Beyond that, whatever comes this spring and into next fall will be telling of the program’s staying power, particularly in light of all that’s changed in college basketball. Can Purdue keep rolling its way, without having to live in the portal or playing NIL Supermarket Sweep. Purdue is set up to be excellent again post-Zach Edey, but it’s the years that follow for which the groundwork is now being laid. That might all start to come to light next season.

As for football, well, the next 12 months will be telling in terms of what place Purdue football can take and hold not only in the new Big Ten, but in this insane college football landscape as a whole. Is Purdue a “have” or a “have not” or some of both? I call it a “kinda have” but this NIL-transfer cycle has been ridiculous.

Is this going to normalize? If not, Purdue compete at a New Year’s Bowl level in this marketplace? Things like that.

I personally think Purdue’s got the right guy in Ryan Walters, but the job is a big one and the headwinds stiff.

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