Express Thoughts: Jacobsen injury, football 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 BASKETBALL AND DANIEL JACOBSEN

Having ridden a stretch of impeccable injury luck in recent years, Purdue took a gut punch this weekend when freshman center Daniel Jacobsen was lost to a broken leg one minute into the second game of his college career.

Just brutal.

But those are the breaks of the game, no inappropriate pun intended, and it’s always something you worry about with those super-tall, long-boned young people in a sport of awkward angles and occasional blunt-force impact, especially when they’re not built like RoboCop as Isaac Haas and Zach Edey were.

It’s brutal for Purdue and brutal for Jacobsen, Purdue’s next great center, in my opinion.

It hurts Purdue now, but it really hurts later, like in March, when maybe Jacobsen would have improved through the course of the season enough to really be a high-impact player when it matters most. Remember what Trevion Williams’ in-season emergence did for that near-Final Four team in 2019-2020.

And this hurts for next year, as the experience Jacobsen was going to get now was really going to matter a year from today, when Purdue should be an elite team barring anything unforeseen, or I should say something else unforeseen, because this qualifies.

But there’s no death sentence here. Jacobsen will spend the year recovering instead of developing, but there’s still upper body strength to be gained, lots of protein to be eaten and lots of time to watch and learn. And if he ends up being a four-year player at Purdue, this year gets refunded on the back end.

Matt Painter has said over and over that there hasn’t been much “separation” in the frontcourt, so this coalition that’ll now play center, it’s not like Purdue is turning to hacks and stiffs. And if this pushes Purdue to put Trey Kaufman-Renn at the 5 more/at all, maybe that turns out to be your best lineup. With or without Jacobsen, Purdue was never going to be a great rebounding and rim-protection team.

Regardless, really rough news for Purdue right out of the gate this season.

ON THE CHANT

When the “Fire Walters” chant was going on in Mackey Arena the other night, my godawful hearing — blunted by covering hundreds of games now inside that volcano of a building — immediately processed it as “Raleigh Burgess!” Yeah, I don’t know where that came from, but regardless, I read about it then during the weekend and have to say I have no opinion.

On one hand, kids will be kids and if you want their exuberance, that goes both ways. On the other, if I owned a restaurant and my most loyal customers didn’t like the new hamburger on the menu, I’d have no issue politely asking them to not jump up and down on their tables yelling about it.

But the topic itself reminds of the additional challenges that come when you’re in a situation like the one Purdue has so quickly come upon with football: The toxicity and how quick things get ugly and how hard it is to undo it.

Look, when all is said and done this season, this might go down as the worst season in school history depending on your perspective of how to compare one bad season to another. Either way, this all broke bad so quick that I think there’s some shock factor in all this. Once things go negative, and your fans start drooling acid, that’s when things self-fulfill.

The Internet is what is, and when everything there is an oily rag, that permeates. It gets to athletes, coaches, recruits, donors. all of it. Same for booing and things like what happened Friday night.

It’s counter-productive, of course, but if sports are fueled by passion, then, again, that cuts both ways.

But the other thing I know is that once it gets to this point, turning it around is really hard to do.

ON POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS

Purdue basketball has a ton to improve and just lost a chunk of its collective upside with Jacobsen’s loss.

But while these first couple games have been predictably uneven, there have been some really eye-opening developments, as well.

For one thing, Fletcher Loyer has been utterly superb, making all the right decisions, being productive and efficient as can be offensively, having no part in the turnover issue, really, and just looking steady as he can be. He’s not going to shoot 70 percent from three for the season, but it is clear that he is set up to thrive with the new personnel around him.

Will Berg — now even more important — has been solid, and that’s all you need. Reminder: Purdue pegged him for the first crack to be the No. 1 center this season, as he started at Creighton. This is the first time in years where Purdue’s center is bound to be a role player and not a featured player. Purdue just needs Berg to screen, rebound and dunk and he’s shown thus far that may not be too big an ask.

Myles Colvin, too. The spark he gave Purdue in each of these first two games was a big deal, and he provided it while seemingly holding up OK in other areas of the game. That wasn’t just empty-calorie scoring.

Those three, plus the freshman guards, look good.