Excerpts from GoldandBlack.com's Weekly Purdue basketball chat session

Each week — or at least most weeks — GoldandBlack.com hosts a chat session for site members to take questions regarding Purdue basketball.

Full transcript thread

Q; How long do you see Painter starting Berg given his performance thus far? It seems he doesn’t bring a lot offensively or on the glass other than screening, and his fouling has been an issue.

A: I don’t know how much it really matters who starts but I think he is prone to want size out there. Berg did do some good things the other night that people don’t give him credit for, but he’s the guy on this team who’s gonna get singled out every game. It never helps when the Twitter engagement farmers come after you, but he is a limited player who just needs to screen, dunk and rebound.

Is that size giving you something that TKR/Heide in the frontcourt can’t? Those guys are rebounding OK right now but needing to play their asses off/overachieve to do it. I do think there’s something to be said for protecting TKR from having to bang with bigger people for 30 minutes or be exposed to more fouls at the 5 than the 4, where you can hide a bit more.

If Painter is going to make a change it’s more likely to be Furst starting, IMO, as he’s done some good things, is better on the perimeter on D and pretty decent in ball screens. You just need him converting at the basket more. When you have Braden Smith and you can high-low with TKR the way Purdue can, you gotta have points on those.

Q: Come March, who do you think will play the most minutes: Berg, Furst, or Burgess?

A: TKR will be the primary 5 by then, but I think of those three, Furst, IMO.

Q: Is there a reason that Smith, Loyer, Colvin, TKR, Furst should not be the starting lineup going forward?

A: Tuesday night there would have been because that was a high-pressure team and those are the teams Painter has in mind when wanting a third guard out there. Colvin is a solid 3-and-D guy now, but he’s not a ball-handler.

There’s no point in discussing what Purdue lost from last season because that’s college basketball, but I’d agree they missed Lance Jones at Marquette as much as anyone.

I think there are real issues with the Smith/Fletch/Harris/TKR/Berg lineup. Harris hasn’t shown it quite yet to be a real slasher or hit the open shot and Berg isn’t doing much besides screening. Playing 3 on 5 on offense with this lineup could make for some rough stretches. Is that part of the reason we have tended to see berg and harris split up as the game has gone on? If so, why start them together?

A: Harris is gonna have to be a garbage points guy, IMO. Transition, forcing turnovers, the occasional opportunity with numbers, but he can make those threes. He just had a bad game. I don’t know if he’s ever gonna be a 40-percent guy, but he’s not gonna be a 20-percent guy either.

Also, screening is really important offensively, as is offensive rebounding and rolling off those screens. That’s where Berg can help them. They just need him to play better and calm down a bit. If it were me, I’d pull him fro the starting five just to take some pressure off him and let him watch for a few. That can change things for players sometimes.

Q: Why is Purdue having so much trouble with turnovers? It used to be feeding the post leading to TOs, but these days, we don’t even feed the post like we used to. With an elite PG running the offense and a team that prioritizes shooting (kinda like the 2012 team with seniors LewJack, Robbie and Ryne Smith), one would think limiting TOs should be our strength, no?

A: Two games ago, they only committed three.

But turnovers are always a risk when you play through the post and in this case, ask one guard to be super-aggressive.

Purdue also just played against one of the best defensive performances against it I’ve ever seen in the fifth game of the season. Not sure that’s enduring reality.

Q: Have you asked Painter why he doesn’t ask his players to be more aggressive on defense, esp. with guards where we have the depth to interchange? It seems other teams are a lot more aggressive on the perimeter, and that limits our offense, while we play too hard to avoid fouls. Also, whereas other teams are determined to prevent us from shooting layups at the expense of fouling (and making us earn from the line), we are content to give up the basket if that means we avoid fouling. Especially against poor FT-shooters (e.g. our frontcourt), that strategy seems to work for the other teams. Obviously, I am not talking about having TKR fouling someone who’s about to score a layup, but why not have Harris doing that dirty job?

A: Many years ago, they more or less traded foot speed for perimeter skill at a time when the rules were moving away from really aggressive defense and the game was moving toward the three-pointer. Ever since, Purdue has been one of the best offensive programs in the country and won a ton of games because of it.

Analytics has told Purdue the importance of keeping the ball out of the paint, which it already knew but now had a data-driven backbone to it. Containment became the priority, as it did for a lot of other places. Illinois’ D is completely different now than it was before.

Meanwhile, you started getting these great big guys who were built to hedge ball screens the way JaJuan Johnson could. So that takes away the initial surge.

Purdue does still try to be disruptive on the ball full-court and does run a pretty complex help structure on defense that does generate the majority of the steals they do force.

But that’s what Purdue is now, an offensive program that still wants to be really good on defense but has to live with some tradeoffs.

The results do speak for themselves.