Express Thoughts: Basketball Fluidity, Northwestern loss

GoldandBlack.com’s Express Thoughts from the Weekend column, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL

Coming off last season’s NCAA runner-up finish, Purdue figured to have six guys back with meaningful experience both playing and winning at this level. Those players are all back, including the three excellent juniors who’ll be their team’s foundation this season.

But back in April, it did not seem likely that this would be a season where Purdue would rely as much on true freshmen as it is about to. Daniel Jacobsen is Purdue’s starting center and my guess is that remains true unless/until Purdue opts to go with Trey Kaufman-Renn there as its standard look. Gicarri Harris will start and be a critical elemental piece in the short term. CJ Cox will be so important as Purdue’s guard depth, he may as well be a sixth starter.

They, Jacobsen in particular, are going to improve as time goes by, and that improvement, both in their ability but also their functionality as part of this team, represents much of this team’s up-side on a team right now with so many moving parts around and including one of the best trios in college basketball.

This is a very different Purdue team from last season, but also from the team you thought you might see this season, the presumption being that Camden Heide and Myles Colvin could graduate into leading roles, which they still may for all we know. They, too, represent the potential for the look of this team to be shaken up.

This is going to be as process-defined a Purdue season as there has been lately, because whereas things were static all last season and to a lesser extent the season prior, they are fluid as anything right now.

The team you see tonight against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi may look entirely different from the one that meets Just Plain Old Texas A&M next month.

ON PURDUE FOOTBALL

I don’t know what Purdue is going to do about Ryan Walters after the season, but don’t have to tell you that Saturday was not good. The overtime loss to Northwestern loss was a game-management defeat as much as anything, and that’s precisely the sort of thing that may be under the microscope once this season is over.

Walters may go on to be a really good head coach one day — I believe that and have since Day 1 — but the lack of experience on this staff is really showing and Walters’ instincts have betrayed him in a lot of situations this season. Instincts are honed and wisdom is accrued via experience and focus, and right now this situation where the head coach is calling the offense, contrary to his defensive background, has felt like a powder keg these past few weeks, even if it was a success in the second half at Illinois.

I thought Walters did a better job with the offense against Northwestern than Graham Harrell ever did, and he deserves credit for that, but meanwhile, the defense remains the worst in college football and the steady hand a head coach is responsible for providing just hasn’t been there when it comes to making some of these game-altering decisions, whether it be to go for these fourth downs or take that 10 yards on the Northwestern holding penalty that might have knocked them out of their kicker’s range. Those three points wound up deciding the game.

There are only so many ways to say that this has been a mess, but Northwestern was a different kind of mess and won’t be looked on kindly when a hard decision has to be made in a few weeks.

ON REDSHIRTING

It is incredibly stupid that college football’s and college basketball’s redshirting rules are completely different.

In football, you can play a meaningful portion of the season — four games, five if there’s an exempt bowl game — and still redshirt, and those games can be at any point in the season. That’s enough permitted playing time for a player to impact his team’s season, as well as more than enough time for him to suffer a career-altering injury. In football, a freshman’s physical readiness is rarely up to snuff in Year 1.

Meanwhile in basketball, a sport much more compatible with an 18-year-old being able to play, if you step on the floor during a game, your redshirt is lit aflame, barring a waiver-type circumstance.

Just to put a face on it: Wouldn’t it make so much more sense for Purdue to be able to play Raleigh Burgess in 10 games this season before deciding whether to redshirt him? Instead Purdue has to make a 50/50 call now with limited information that will ripple through the player’s whole career and the program’s five-year window.

If it were football, you could use such a player for a proportionate amount of the season. You could even promote your whole redshirt team for the end of the season, like September call-ups in baseball.

Make it make sense.