Express Thoughts—Recruiting, DBs and more
GoldandBlack.com’s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind.
ON PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING
As Purdue’s coaches go out on the road this weekend for the July evaluation period, there are some musts here, whether they are stated, overt goals or just things quacks like me write about during deadline desperation.
- Purdue needs its next point guard. The end of the Braden Smith Era — he’s been the Boilermakers’ Cassius Winston thus far, as predicted here some time back in a moment of hyperbole — is already in sight. Purdue’s two freshman guards right now are keepers, but combo types. Smith has punctuated the value of more a playmaker type.
2. Purdue needs to keep recruiting its typical salt-of-the-earth types but Matt Painter will be the first to tell you about the importance of having stars to build around. Obviously. Are there stars on the roster now? Yes. Are there stars on the roster now who’ve yet to get their shot to show it? Yes. But it’s never too early to find the next generation.
3. Shooting. Every member of Purdue’s freshman class can shoot, but with Fletcher Loyer‘s career having reached halftime, it’s time to find the next focal-point type. For as much as Purdue has become known for big men, it’s really been the co-existence between said big men and the skill around them that have defined Purdue in modern years. (Maybe Jack Benter turns out to be that guy.)
Purdue’s virtually guaranteed to be excellent for at least the next two seasons, but obviously success and consistency in college basketball are cultivated years in advance.
ON PURDUE FOOTBALL RECRUITING
When Dawayne Galloway committed to Purdue a few days back, the addition was universally hailed as the Boilermaker 2025 class’ highest-rated addition, but it feels like someone ought to be screaming this from the hilltops for the sake of context …
Tarrion Grant, a five-star recruit (if you’re into such cosmetics) committed long ago and reclassified out of the 2025 class and right into his apartment or dorm room — however the kids do it these day — in West Lafayette.
So that’s essentially two defensive back recruits from the would-have-been rising senior class who average four-and-a-half stars between them (if you’re into such cosmetics).
That would seem like a big deal unto itself. No one knows how these players will turn out — all these high school recruits nowadays are lottery tickets — but in the short term it’s significant that Purdue has been able to get some players of national repute, because buzz and momentum matter, and show it can compete in the NIL-shopping-spree world. To the latter point, maybe not all across the board, but on a priority guy here and there, maybe a couple per class.
And that they’re DBs …
As has been written here before, an essential piece to Ryan Walters getting things to a place where Purdue can win in this new Big Ten — akin to sticking one’s hand down an active garbage disposal — is the cultivation of signature positions and consistent strength lying in those areas, like what Jeff Brohm had going at wide receiver before JaMarcus Shephard left or what the Tiller Era brought at defensive end and quarterback.
This current staff is really too young to have all that extensive a body of work, but the clearest possibility for that foundational area would be the secondary, where Walters and some of these staffers made Devon Weatherspoon and Sydney Brown into NFL picks at Illinois and just produced a freshman All-American at Purdue in Dillon Thieneman, a fine player but also one who benefited amply from scheme. (So did Nic Scourton, an absolute monster who made a lot of short- and long-term money in large part due to Walters’ and staff’s system.)
Grant and Galloway seem to have come to the right place.
Their careers are a chance for this Purdue staff to prove it, then hope success begets success.
ON THE NBA AND COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Not the timeliest thought but a thought nonetheless …
When Zach Edey was taken ninth in the NBA Draft by the Memphis Grizzlies, it was a moment of sorts for the U.S. college basketball senior, the cold-product prospect so often booted to the periphery of an event normally dominated by pre-adults and Scrabble-board names from countries born from the end of the Cold War.
Maybe I’m stuck in a Purdue-information vacuum here, but it sure seems like Edey generated as much discussion nationally as any of the international or semi-pro kids taken at the top of the worst draft I can remember. Hell, the 55th pick in the draft got more digital ink than the first, in part because Bronny James is a household name but also because no one has ever heard of Zaccharie Risacher (and may never again unless paying close attention to the middling Hawks).
Maybe Overtime elite groupies can tell you about vagabond Alex Sarr’s one season in Atlanta, but otherwise this year’s top five picks accounted for a whopping two years of TV and media exposure in America. College basketball people know Reed Sheppard and Stephon Castle, but would any casual NBA fan?
This is what the NBA has always needed college basketball for: Free marketing. The biggest reason that the NBA has an age limit is just that: It wants or needs stars made before the draft. The G-League wasn’t getting it done, so the plug got pulled. The NBA missed an opportunity to force required G-League exposure into its new media deal, in my opinion. (Sure, TBS, you can keep a slice of the broadcast package, but only if you put Ron Holland vs. Matas Buzelis on in prime time instead of “Monk” re-runs and promote it during whatever is left of “Inside The NBA.”)
Point here is that the NBA needs college basketball. Talent will win out 100 times out of 100 over all other considerations, but maybe you start seeing more of players like Edey — for whom every shred of information was available and every nook and cranny of his body of work right there in plain view (no grainy early-2000s camcorder-quality footage necessary) — being rewarded more for their achievements domestically over someone’s glimpses internationally.
That would be a great thing for the NBA and college basketball alike.
