Express Thoughts: Braden Smith, UCLA win and more

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’S BRADEN SMITH

I’m going to keep writing this because it keeps being true: Don’t take this stuff for granted, the greatness of these guys who’ve come through Purdue in its modern era, because this stuff isn’t normal.

Caleb Swanigan wasn’t normal, Jaden Ivey wasn’t normal, Zach Edey was downright abnormal and now this super-computer Purdue has playing point guard, he’s not normal either.

Friday night, Braden Smith became the Boilermakers’ all-time career assists leader with still a bunch of junior season left. He’ll have a puncher’s chance at the NCAA record as a senior.

Expectations around Purdue these days and the standards these players set for their own play make it kind of easy to take it all for granted and just pencil in Edey for 25-and-10 every game or Smith for 11 assists and not appreciate it while it’s happening.

This stuff is special and don’t ever think different.

Purdue has been fortunate to have all these All-Americans going all the way back to JaJuan Johnson, Robbie Hummel and E’Twaun Moore, but fortunate and lucky are two different things.

This isn’t luck. This is what Matt Painter and staff do: See things in players no one else does, then develop it and set it up to succeed. They do it as well as anyone in the sport.

ON UCLA

UCLA is one of college basketball’s shiniest brands and, because of it, plays often on big, big stages. It gets showcase non-conference opportunities, elite MTE placement and access to great home-and-home (or neutral-site) series.

But when the Bruins stepped onto Keady Court Friday night, just like cross-city rival USC did weeks earlier, it was stepping into a different world. These teams have been playing at Washington State, Colorado and Stanford. It’s no wonder UCLA — a legitimately good team that would be competing for a league title if the playing field was level — is now 1-6 in the Big Ten playing outside the Pacific Coast.

The cultural basketball difference is a big deal, too, not just travel and style of play.

When Purdue played out west, it played in front of a de facto home crowd at Washington then a pretty tepid one at Oregon. It won both games. When USC and UCLA came to West Lafayette, they walked into a Cuisinart. Purdue won both. The contrast was stark as can be.

This isn’t going to change for these Western teams, and this isn’t just Purdue. Michigan State, Wisconsin, IU, Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, they’re all going to be snakepits fot these programs who’ve been playing league games in petting zoos for years now.

They have no chance, and the only sway they’ll really carry in championship races will be the logistics losses other contenders incur in a league whose championships have been watered down by its numbers, geography and schedules being stretched way too thin.

Everybody who matters in the Big Ten lost their second game, or first, after their western swing. That’s not a coincidence. And because of these four tack-ons, everyone else’s double-plays have been diluted to an even more impactful extent.

Let’s just look at Purdue, because that’s our focus here.

If the Boilermakers had gotten Penn State, Minnesota, Northwestern or Iowa twice, or Michigan State or Illinois twice (and thus at home), its record ends up very different. Getting Michigan twice and getting rail-roaded in that game right before the Wolverines’ luck started to run out, that wound up being a bad break. It’s kind of a moot point because Purdue won all four games that replaced rematches on the schedule, but it doesn’t remind how the schedule’s choked-off wiggle room matters. Purdue’s not going to win the Big Ten regular season title, but had it gotten a second go at Michigan State or Wisconsin, it would have had a little more say in it, and with these four new single plays, that stuff becomes even more relevant now.

This is all so silly. It sucks more for the new teams — UCLA is in the Midwest right now for the second time this month, then will have to come right back for the Big Ten Tournament — but their presidents and regents and athletic directors signed up for this. For those existing Big Ten members this was forced on for no compelling reason, I have more sympathy for them.

You think this is a good deal for Indiana or Wisconsin?

It’s all so silly.

ON TREY KAUFMAN-RENN

Purdue has this growing murderer’s row of great big men and Trey Kaufman-Renn is about to be its next All-American.

But this one’s different.

When you categorize Painter’s great players, Kaufman-Renn belongs more in the “scorer” bucket — E’Twaun Moore, Carsen Edwards, Jaden Ivey, etc. — then he does next to Caleb Swanigan or JaJuan Johnson or Zach Edey, because Kaufman-Renn’s greatness aligns much more with the former than the latter. Yeah, he’s a low-post scorer, but not as complete a game influencer as those bigs were because of their physical gifts.

But what Kaufman-Renn does, he does at as high a level as any of Purdue’s greats, regardless of position or role.

Great players come in all shapes and sizes and I’m not sure anyone in America has illustrated that better than Purdue.