Weekly Word: Purdue’s big test, the recruiting class and more
The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s Weekly Word, we discuss Purdue’s Maui trip, basketball’s recruiting class and more.
PURDUE BASKETBALL
So, this is it. Purdue’s ultimate early season proving ground, out in Honolulu.
I don’t know if next week’s Maui Invitational is the greatest MTE field ever assembled, but how can there ever be one better. This is essentially a November Elite Eight.
November has belonged to Purdue, which is more compliment than it is back-handed compliment. It’s been the Boilermakers’ time to announce their presence, first at the Mohegan Sun two seasons ago, then PK85 last season, mowing down bluebloods one after the other en route to event titles, unbeaten non-conference seasons and eventually No. 1 rankings.
Those two seasons were different than this one. In Connecicut and Portland, Purdue was a surprise. Now, if Purdue wins on Oahu, it shouldn’t surprise anyone. Of all the great teams out there — Kansas, Gonzaga, Tennessee — and name-brand filler — UCLA and Syracuse — out there, the Jayhawks are the only team I’m not sure I’d pick the Boilermakers over head to head. Not to say that’s the only game Purdue could lose; it could lose any of ’em.
But this is a role reversal for Purdue, which has to thrive this season as a favorite, every time out. In Hawaii, that doesn’t mean bracing for Rutgers’ best shot, but rather Gonzaga’s.
November outcomes can fade into the ether pretty quickly, but there couldn’t possibly be a better test of Purdue’s presumed greatness at this point.
Something to add here, too. The Mauni Invitational contract was signed long ago, but Purdue did not have to add Arizona and Alabama to this schedule. Most coaches wouldn’t have. Kudos to Matt Painter for really putting his program out there for the world to see and daring his team to be best it can be. The time for that is now.
ON PURDUE’S RECRUITING CLASS
This was an outstanding class Purdue signed, and when you sign six guys, quality has to stand eye to eye with quantity. This will have to be a foundational group for the program, even after the numbers change via inevitable redshirts and the standard comings and goings that will define modern college basketball.
A few thoughts on the class that perhaps we haven’t hit on yet.
• If there’s a potential star in the class, it’s Kanon Catchings, who’s only now scratching the surface of what he can be as his body fills out at Overtime Elite. But let’s also where this 7-foot-3 fellow with the pure jumper is in a few years. Daniel Jacobsen was an enormous get in more ways than one and will be the not-so-common touted recruit who won’t come with an obligation to play him a ton right away. Four-star developmental recruits are the best kind of developmental recruit. This is the one to watch in the class, if you ask me.
• Stop trying to guess on redshirts. The two surest-fire picks to redshirt as incoming freshmen I’ve ever covered were Ryan Cline and Zach Edey and neither did. You never know how things play out, but there will be at least one redshirt, more likely two, I’d think, but that’s a topic for 11 months from now.
• Gicarri Harris is the safest bet to contribute immediately. He’s physically ready. He won’t be floored by the upped competitive level. And while he is a very different player, his defensive approach might help ease the losses of Lance Jones and Ethan Morton.
• Two defining characteristics of this class: 1) All six guys can shoot and 2) Positional versatility with every player. Obviously two very important elements. Getting two defensive-minded guards who can handle and shoot is a big deal. There’s often a trade-off that comes with defenders and it’s often shooting. There’s often a trade-off that comes with shooting and it’s often defense. CJ Cox and Gicarri Harris are 3-and-D to the core.
From a shooting perspective, there are real scenarios where Purdue may have the personnel to play legit five-out offense, belying its post-centric rep.
• Purdue essentially having this whole class wrapped up by mid-summer then Jacobsen jumping from 2025 to 2024 kept the Boilermaker coaching staff perpetually ahead in recruiting. Having just one scholarship in ’25, provided that holds, keeps the Boilermaker coaching staff perpetually ahead in recruiting. It’s a huge advantage when recruiting high school players.
• Barring anything unforeseen, this class and the scholarship glut it creates means Purdue is unlikely to need the transfer market this spring, just the way I’d imagine it likes it. The Lance Jones Story — Purdue landed the ideal guy quick and clean without any price tags attached — was more the exception than the rule.
• As a basketball observer who happens to have a bizarre infatuation with guards who post up, I’m interested to see whether Jack Benter‘s post-up game is something Purdue can develop into being a prime piece of its offense one day. I don’t know if he’s quite the shooter Dakota Mathias was, but this is the closest thing since. Benter’s big, can handle and pass, shoot from all levels and just knows basketball.
• Raleigh Burgess is better suited to play center than forward, if you ask me, but where he’s ultimately slotted will be determined when he arrives and it’s not like Purdue hasn’t used players at both positions before. It’s doing it right now with Caleb Furst. Similar to Furst, Burgess is a high-energy big who can play inside-out. Differences: Burgess is gonna be bigger and is probably a better shooter at this stage, based on what I’ve seen at least. But his energy is really an elemental plus for this class, especially as Mason Gillis departs and Furst enters his final season.
• This class virtually assures that Purdue will get through this silly COVID-year window without returning a single scholarship player for an extra year. It did take extra-year guys as transfers but never returned one. I think the window for all this just happened to align with the best recruiting stretch of Matt Painter’s tenure, plus a narrowing of scholarship space.
It will be a great thing for college basketball when this dumb COVID-year loophole closes. It was unnecessary in the first place, but when combined with open transfers and NIL auctions, it’s been an agent of chaos.
Purdue Flag (Chad Krockover)
RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK
• The end of the Gavitt Games, on the heels of the end of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge and the dissolution of the Crossroads Classic, tears down most of the basic framework Purdue has long built its non-conference schedule around, meaning it’ll have to — and has been — working on new and innovative ways to get marquee games. Easier said than done when you need premiere home games for your fans, but so few high-end programs are bending over backwards to play on someone else’s floor, especially a place like Mackey Arena. That was the great thing about those series — they forced people to play tough games on the road. And it was TV that made that happen.
Now, with the Big Ten fully divorced from ESPN, you have to hope that college basketball doesn’t become like grassroots basketball, where there are Nike programs, adidas programs and Under Armour programs and they very, very, very rarely cross paths. I doubt the Big Ten’s increased affiliation with FOX, CBS and now NBC isolates it from a scheduling perspective, but could be a barrier to any of these conference-on-conference series from happening ever again.
You see how much money is being spent here. Basketball was not the driving force behind the Big Ten’s billion-dollar TV deal, but its media partners didn’t invest (in football) to this extent without wanting to secure every shred of must-see TV they can get. If that means standing in the way of Michigan State playing at North Carolina just because ESPN might have the rights, so be it.
• Game ball for this basketball recruiting cycle goes to Boilermaker assistant coach Brandon Brantley, who landed Kanon Catchings, Gicarri Harris and Daniel Jacobsen. In the cases of Catchings and Harris, he won over families just as much as the kids and built relationships that really locked both those recruitments down before they really even began (even if Harris took his formal decision down to the last second). Brantley weathered some rough patches with Catchings and spent months, I’d suspect, knowing but not knowing what Harris would do.
Tremendous haul for Purdue attributable in large part to Brantley.
• Northwestern has really been a surprise in the putrid Big Ten West this season, and because of it, David Braun is now their coach for the long haul, after taking over on an interim basis. One wonders if that might affect Northwestern this weekend, without that question lingering.
But also this will be interesting long-term for Northwestern, because these are big decisions and the longview matters most. Years back, Bill Lynch took over at Indiana for the late Terry Hoeppner, had a solid season with a team he didn’t build and IU wound up with a coach it never would have hired as part of an open search.
It’s a dangerous game getting caught up in the moment.
The post Weekly Word: Purdue’s big test, the recruiting class and more appeared first on On3.
