Express Thoughts: Purdue’s Constance, CJ Cox and football

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 ALABAMA

One takeaway from Purdue’s win over No. 2 ‘Bama Friday night: The program endures.

I think that the Crimson Tide might have been a Vegas favorite in West Lafayette, but the Boilermakers are never, ever an underdog in Mackey Arena. Zach Edey or no Zach Edey, that’s true, same as it was after E’Twaun Moore after JaJuan Johnson, after Robbie Hummel, after Carsen Edwards, after Caleb Swanigan, after the 2014 class and after Jaden Ivey, and same as it will be after Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn.

Programs are not just their players and coaches or their systems or styles. It’s their facilities and followings, too, and the reason Purdue should never be considered an underdog at home is precisely that, that that place becomes a terrordome for opponents once that crowd comes to life.

And this was a Purdue team, on this night, that deserved the response it got, because culture is a big deal, too, and that Boilermaker team played its you-know-what off Friday night. And there was no better face to put on the evening than that of Myles Colvin‘s absolute elation in victory after not even attempting a shot. People love players who love winning.

That kind of stuff, that’s why Purdue people love Purdue basketball teams.

Again, the program endures.

ON PURDUE’S CJ COX

Special wins are often remembered for the special performances that make them happen, and that’s exactly what freshman CJ Cox‘s out-of-body experience there in the second half was.

That was his third college game, the biggest game of his basketball life to date (all due respect to Milton Academy’s schedules and Middlesex Magic’s success on the UA circuit) and an environment so intoxicating it could have gone a lot of different ways for a young player.

Three months ago, Cox was interning at an investment firm in Boston that aims to contribute to a “a more productive and resilient future.”

That’s what this budding star and fan favorite is bound to do at Purdue.

ON THE PURDUE FOOTBALL SITUATION

This weekend could have really been something special in West Lafayette, as basketball and football both hosted top-five teams in the span of 18 hours.

Basketball held up its end, but as has been the case all season, football did not. When I say “hold up its end,” I don’t necessarily mean winning, because football could be having a great season and beating Penn State would still probably have been too tall an order. But it’s not too big an ask at this point for Purdue to at least have people coming to the stadium thinking, “Hey, you never know.”

It’s just not that way, and doesn’t seem to be heading that way, with two games left in a chemical spill of a season. There’s really nothing realistic that can happen these last two games that can change that, nor is it reasonable to look at this as a situation that can turn on a dime, because if it could, it would have already.

The optics of Saturday afternoon reflected all of it, as the stadium was filled with various, um, murmurs from the students and left virtually empty, Penn State fans aside, for most of the fourth quarter, as Purdue’s on a collision course with 1-11. As has happened many times this season, Ryan Walters tried to rally his team and his team responded by blowing tackles, allowing an opposing receiver to fair catch a touchdown and by catching a touchdown itself with two feet out of bounds.

Prior to the game, Purdue said good-bye to its seniors; after, Walters was asked about the process of retaining his best players during this NIL and Portal Era that has really been unkind to this program. That brought to mind the elephant-in-the-room question of how much it matters who leaves considering the results right now.

Regardless, Purdue is really going to be rebooting next season. Hudson Card is gone, not that that panned out. So are some of your best players from a defense that has been terrible. A bunch of these guys — dozens, maybe — will be in portal.

This just begs the question of how things go down from here. Walters keeps mentioning “next year” and has to considering that when he speaks publicly, he’s not just speaking to you and me, but to his team and to his recruits and to his bosses. Of course he’s talking about next year.

But we’ll see here. The “buzz,” as we like to call the aggregate of varying forms of often speculative and sometimes non-specific info, suggests Purdue may give the head coach Year 3 on the condition things are retooled around him staff-wise.

We’ll see. If there were positive undercurrents to this season, that would be an easier sell than not, but there are no positive undercurrents, just hope. Just the hope that a new portal class can do what these past two haven’t, the hope that Walters can recuse himself from coaching the defense and/or offense to be a CEO, to “coach the coaches.”

Can that work? If that was the case now, would Purdue’s talented and well-paid quarterback not be a shell of what he should be? Would Purdue have a reliable kicking game? Would it not be giving up numerous disastrous plays on defense per game? Would first-quarter 7-0 deficits not be erupting into 40-point losses the same way over and over again? Would any of this be different?

I guess anything’s possible. But there’s no compelling evidence anything would be all that different, at least not from what I can tell.

Maybe Purdue retools.

But sometimes its cheaper and easier to just buy a new car than to bend over backwards to make your current one run.

I still have a really hard time believing Purdue won’t be car-shopping here in a few weeks.