Express Thoughts: Purdue’s postseason and more

GoldandBlack’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

Purdue’s disappointing finish takes the exclamation point off it, but the Boilermakers are about to yield yet another Big Ten Player of the Year, as Braden Smith is almost certainly going to win it, after being the preseason favorite.

I do vote and for me the only other players I could even conceive a case for were Wisconsin’s John Tonje, Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn and maybe — maybe — Maryland’s Derik Queen, but not really. Michigan State not having a real individual star opened things up all the more, as did Michigan predictably fading down the stretch.

But Smith isn’t winning this by default. He was brilliant all season, easily the most important and influential player in the league. He’s just so easy to take for granted when you’re watching really closely. The things you see him do every game that aren’t normal just become routine.

You have to understand that this was a season of more for him. It was his team now, not Zach Edey’s, and Purdue couldn’t have asked for much more for him. To do so would have been to ask for perfection.

Purdue did not close the season well with championships at stake, but that should not indict Smith but rather highlight some of the areas in which a flawed Boilermaker team probably overachieved to some extent this season.

Smith will be Big Ten Player-of-the-Year and a first-team All-American and win one of those positional awards Purdue is always mad about.

He’ll deserve all of it.

And assuming this group comes back mostly intact, some key pieces are added, a few guys get better and Purdue gets some of the luck it didn’t this season, the best may be yet to come

ON THE BIG TEN TOURNAMENT

Last year, losing in the Big Ten Tournament might have been the best thing that happened to Purdue because A) Smith didn’t need to be playing another game on the tweaked knee that clearly affected him vs. Wisconsin but more importantly B) it pissed Purdue. Anger turned the Boilermakers into a Terminator and the Final Four was its John Conner. That was worth more than a chance to unify the Big Ten title belt.

Now, it’s different. Purdue ought to view this Big Ten Tournament title as its shot, its chance to still win a championship, a chance to strike from the record five losses in seven games, each of them uniquely maddening, a chance to enter the NCAA Tournament with the wind at its back.

I’ll repeat: Purdue is an underdog now.

A program 11 months removed from playing for a national title and accustomed to courts being stormed against it on the road is now an underdog. It’ll be hanging on for dear life in the (meaningless) top-25 polls this week before it heads to Indianapolis as the 6 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, unlike anything you’d have expected this season.

Historically, the role of underdog has been one Purdue has worn well, but it was likely never a look this group figured it would take on.

ON BOORISH FAN BEHAVIOR

Student sections are the heartbeat of many, many arenas in college basketball, especially in the Big Ten, and because of it, schools do whatever they can to incubate rowdiness.

Purdue does. Its student section is one of the best in the sport and inextricably linked to the homecourt edge that has become inextricably linked to the identity of its program.

But I’ll say this after covering another long and often ugly Big Ten basketball season: Schools ought to view their student section cultures objectively and start by asking themselves the question of what can go wrong, first and foremost.

Can Purdue have ugliness? Of course it can. I’d never argue otherwise, and I don’t have vantage point enough to confirm or deny.

Kids are kids and to be a kid is to be, well, stupid. All you need is a reason and college basketball is a hall pass for being your worst self. Throw in gambling, alcohol, social media and the expectation that it is explicitly your job to mess with the opponent, and this stuff can get real ugly real quick. I have had first-hand knowledge over the years of things students at Purdue were planning to do that the administration nixed. The Big Ten even stepped in once at a visiting school’s request; Purdue beefed up security for last year’s Illinois game at Illinois‘ request, because of all that was going on with the eventually exonerated Terrance Shannon.

The point I’m laboring toward here: This stuff needs to be managed.

Look, I’m no prude. Those of you motherf—ers who know me know that.

But Illinois these past two seasons have been over the line, which I can credibly tell you because students occupy the space right behind the media.

This stuff needs to be managed.

If you’re going to put students directly behind the visiting bench — Mistake No. 1 — and surround families on both sides with students — Mistake No. 2 — then at least limit alcohol sales or crack down on all the little clear bottles that don’t get sold in the arena but end up littering the floor afterward. Or beef up security even more and eject people. I’m talking about every school, or at least those with real student sections. When someone yells, “F–k you, Edey” during the National Anthem maybe use that as an opportunity to send a message.

The Big Ten and NCAA are on the hook here, too, when really bad things happen and those trite sportsmanship messages before games ain’t cuttin’ it. I don’t know if you guys have noticed or not but young men are getting angrier and the world around them increasingly Clockwork Orange-ish.

Look, contrary to troll fans’ disinformation campaign on social media, the incident with Trey Kaufman-Renn‘s family happened Friday night. That we as visiting media collectively bungled the “reports to the Big Ten” part — I’ll take responsibility for that — doesn’t change that. Illinois ostensibly confirmed the incident by releasing a statement about it apologizing to Purdue. I didn’t hear what was said but I did hear lots of other stuff (through earbuds) and observed various interactions with both security and an actual police officer, judging by the gun on his hip, at least.

It wasn’t just players and families. The cursing out of referee Jeffrey Anderson started before the game even tipped off, an interesting strategic decision by fans who presumably wanted their team to win. Look, there is awful referee’ing in the Big Ten at times, but no one deserves some of the stuff that was being said.

I’m not in any way suggesting that every Illinois fan is a savage, nor am I in any way saying this sort of toxicity can’t exist anywhere.

I’m just saying that college basketball culture is getting too corrosive to go on like this. This is going to become another one of these college sports problems that just pass the point of no return.