Express thoughts from the Weekend

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.

FIRST IMPRESSION OF THE NEW NORTHWEST OUTPOST

After being at Washington and Oregon this weekend, here’s what stood out about two of the Big Ten’s four new members: Those aren’t college basketball towns. Football towns, sure, but in basketball, nope. What makes Big Ten basketball what it is is precisely the passion for this sport and these teams in these smallish, cold, relatively boring Midwestern towns and cities.

Rutgers and Maryland don’t really fit, either, but at least there’s a natural inclination toward rowdiness at those places.

These places, meh. Washington has had some great teams and great players over the years, and enough booster support to pay a guy $2 million (reportedly) to inevitably miss the Big Ten Tournament this season, but they are bound to be the Big Ten’s new Minnesota. Maybe the fans and pro-sports-town local media will care when they’re good.

Oregon, to me, looked like a football and track school whose fan-following passion lies mostly in the only individual who actually matters there. Saturday might have been Oregon’s first marquee Big Ten game, football is over and there were empty seats. Maybe they were sold and just unoccupied, I don’t know, but I also don’t know which is worse.

I’ll tell you what’s the worst for those schools: Needing their fans who do show up to boo down the Purdue-partisan chants in road arenas. Purdue may not have a national fanbase, per se, but it has a fan base spread nationally, and they always show up on the coasts. Always.

That’s what Washington and Oregon faced this past week, and it’s what USC will encounter next year when that’s essentially a Purdue home game. I don’t know about UCLA, an actual basketball school, but Purdue will have people there, too, I’m sure; just maybe not so many that they’ll take the place over.

I’ve said this before: These programs shouldn’t be in the Big Ten in basketball, and I’m also realizing now more than ever, they shouldn’t want to be.

ON WINNING FORMULAS

This season is a reminder that there is no blueprint, not at Purdue, at least, as the parallels to 2019-2020 grow even stronger. That was an atypical Matt Painter team, as this one is, but figured things out as it went.

Purdue’s growth into one the best post-rules-changes defensive teams Painter’s had has been shocking, and a profound credit to all those involved. It’s dominated during this winning streak and almost completely struck some real deficiencies from relevance.

The offense, tweaked to feature Trey Kaufman-Renn, the polar opposite of Zach Edey, has been very good, again. Once Purdue got away from the SEC, its limitations didn’t go away, but they stopped mattering.

Purdue has real momentum right now, and has served everyone a stark reminder that seasons are not defined by what happens early. Teams get better, players get better and sometimes something like Caleb Furst happens.

Sometimes coaches push the right buttons and sometimes losing in December benefits a team in January. Purdue is not used to being embarrassed, and look at what these players have done since Auburn.

This has been a program accustomed to physically overwhelming people and burying them in threes.

Now, Purdue is smaller than many of its peers, but winning with guard play and stifling defense that excuses its threes not falling.

Yeah, Purdue’s had a type of team in the modern era, but was never boxed in to just one type.

ON BIG TEN FOOTBALL

If Ohio State wins the whole enchilada here tonight over Notre Dame, as I’d expect, it’ll be two in a row for the Big Ten, in addition to it now being two straight seasons in which the SEC was absent from the championship game.

Unpopular take: NIL and the portal have been good for parity in college football, but down south, this will not stand very long: Michigan and Ohio State have bought championship-worthy teams the past two years, Oregon tried and Penn State is next on deck.

Wait to see now how much money flows in Tuscaloosa and Athens and Austin now.

It’ll take this power struggle to a whole different level.

It used to be about facilities and stuff. Not anymore.