Express Word: A busy week and forward thinking

The Express Word is the Gold and Black Express weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, Purdue basketball, Houston, transfer-week happenings and more.

LOSING THE PLOT

You know, I’m starting to think that CBS might be just as well off paying the NCAA a trillion dollars to run a live portal-update stream on Discord instead of televising all the most important college basketball games of the season because it seems like outsized attention is being paid to what comes after all these games of immense consequence.

I do radio shows and online chat sessions quite a bit this time of year, and this week, the Purdue-Houston matchup questions have seemed like just content boxes being checked before the onset of portal fever.

Transfer portal activity isn’t overshadowing the NCAA Tournament, but it is drawing some attention from it and filling in the gaps when we might otherwise be discussing actual games. I get it. Who’s going to be playing for who next season is a big story. Not as big as who’s playing right now, but a big story nonetheless.

And that’s where the problem lies here for college basketball. It’s not in the fact that 16 coaching staffs are currently doing two labor-intensive jobs at once, nor is it that a few dozen players have to wait a week or two to hit free agency.

It’s that this is drawing attention away from the whole point of it all: March.

This isn’t all that dissimilar from the NFL holding its draft — the event that makes the league a 12-month-a-year news cycle — during Super Bowl week.

But the difference is this: The NFL can hold its draft whenever it wants. College basketball being tethered to both higher education and a traditional recruiting calendar — someone has to bring high school kids into the matrix at some point still, right? — make this particular week the least problematic window of time.

Coaches who don’t like it, present solutions. Don’t just bitch about someone not doing something about all the problems. Today’s game is for the adaptable.

Those are the people who will thrive in March for here on out. Maybe people will notice.

SPEAKING OF ADAPTABILITY

Matt Painter is one of the most adaptable, flexible coaches you’re going to find, a tiger who’s changed his stripes profoundly from the start of his career until now and has hit his peak doing things his way precisely as the landscape has diverged strongly away from his way.

There are serious misperceptions, though, about Painter. He is not averse to recruiting transfers; he is averse to building teams around them every year. He is not averse to players being paid, far from it; he is averse to promising absurd sums to people who haven’t earned it. He is not taking riff-raff off the streets and turning them into great players; he is recruiting good players and helping them become great.

Just to clear some of that up, because people still kind of talk about Purdue like it’s this plucky overachiever and not one of the best, most stable programs in the country. It has been just that, and it’s no coincidence that Painter moving against the grain has contributed to unprecedented winning around West Lafayette.

But the game is the game and if there are parts of this that Purdue has resisted, then the time is now to play that game to whatever extent necessary, without compromising anyone’s principles or being, well, stupid about things. “Stupid” is a fitting term for a lot of what is happening right now in the final throes of the Legal Cheating NIL Era.

Purdue has an opportunity next season, barring any surprises among the core — and they wouldn’t be surprises if they could be predicted — to do something big, and just like Painter and his staff owe every ounce of their being right now to helping this team right now beat Houston, they mean just as much to next year’s team and helping it be great.

That will mean going after impact transfers at areas of need. That will mean proactively talking about money, easier to do now that revenue-sharing nears. Maybe it’ll mean negotiations of some kind. If you’re thinking this will be just like Lance Jones, don’t. That was too straight-forward, too drama-free to be true, or replicable.

Maybe it’ll mean being as aggressive as can be with not just adding pieces but upgrading a few if possible. Purdue needs to keep investing in its young players, but must manage that in correlation with optimizing its roster. Adding nearly 15 feet of Daniel Jacobsen and an experienced Raleigh Burgess next season may transform Purdue, but the two freshmen have two good legs between them right now, so banking on it may not be a safe wager. Their time will come.

All options must be on the table right now, because next season is a rare opportunity, one that can’t involve the same limitations Purdue had to overcome all season this year.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• Because I live a super-exciting life, I spent an hour or so the other night watching every turnover Houston forced this season and can tell you that if Purdue can handle this, Purdue can handle anything. They look like they have eight guys on the floor most of the time, like a team that has somehow figured out how to double team every position all at once all the time.

• Pretty damn good hiring cycle for the Big Ten already, as Darrian DeVries, Ben McCollum and Niko Medved were all very good hires, I think. There aren’t a lot of empty suits coaching in the Big Ten anymore, which not every conference can say.

• Following up on the note above: Purdue has to be able to put functional size next to Trey Kaufman-Renn next season. Circumstance led to too much being asked of him this season as a rebounder and defender. Whether it’s Jacobsen or a new player, they just can’t be in this position again.

But bigger lineups would also trigger some measure of adjustment offensively next season. Small Purdue was Purdue’s best offensive approach.

• They shouldn’t have second-weekend games in football stadiums. It’s unnatural and weird.

The Final Four, sure, but the second weekend? Come on now.

• If you can get Jalen Washington, hey, it’s worth a shot. I don’t know if it’s ever an ideal message to send that if you are from the state, if you pass on us at first, we’ll always be here as Plan B, but in this moment, a rebounder and shot-blocker like the Gary native, with whom you already have a positive relationship, go for it.

If Purdue can get him. I have no idea.

• Pretty slick of me to write first decrying how the transfer portal is distracting from this very moment in time, then write everything else about next season, huh?