Express Word: Basketball Fearful Predictions
The Express Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, our annual preseason basketball predictions.
FEARFUL PREDICTIONS: PURDUE’S 2024-2025 SEASON
Some web sites have fearless predictions. Not us. Ours terrify us.
That said, this year’s Fearful Predictions for the 2024-2025 Purdue basketball season.
• Purdue will win 26 games, earn a 3 seed and get at least as far as the Sweet 16 en route to another credible Final Four shot next season.
• Though new West Coast travel will affect the Big Ten race — teams will lose games because of it — and make it as unpredictable as ever, the Boilermakers will earn a share of their third-consecutive regular season conference title.
• November might be rough by past Purdue standards, which have set an unrealistic standard. Purdue will lose non-conference games this season for the first time since 2020.
• Braden Smith will be Big Ten Player-of-the-Year and win the Cousy Award. His assist numbers, though, will dip from last season’s average of 7.5 not just because of Zach Edey being gone but because of his stats being thinned out by him having to alternate focuses between scoring and facilitating, as you’ve already seen him do to both extremes this season, from 31 points at Creighton to 15 assists vs. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
• Smith will record two triple-doubles this season.
• Trey Kaufman-Renn will be second-team All-Big Ten — remember, there’s 18 teams now, so those five first-team picks are even more exclusive — and lead Purdue in scoring and rebounding, in the vicinity of 15 points, more if he can shoot 70-plus percent at the foul line, and seven boards.
• Raleigh Burgess will eventually wind up averaging double-digit minutes off the bench for Purdue, splitting time between forward and center.
• Fletcher Loyer and Smith will be deadlocked all season behind Kaufman-Renn in scoring column, but Loyer will get around 13 a game on roughly the same three-point shooting he shot overall (44.4 percent) last season. His overall field goal percentage will jump from 41.6 to around 45 and his assists will spike.
• Purdue will end up averaging about eight turnovers per game, a good number, and end up being pretty productive on the offensive glass. The 2019 team’s model may really apply to this year’s group.
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• Kaufman-Renn and Daniel Jacobsen will be carrying most of the minutes at center by the end of the season.
• Purdue will shoot a bit better than last season’s 72 percent at the line simply because Smith and Loyer’s volume will go up. Kaufman-Renn may be up and down, but will wind up around an acceptable 70 percent.
• Jacobsen will make a dozen three-pointers.
• Gicarri Harris and CJ Cox will combine for 50-plus steals this season. They’ll both be really important players, but fouls and turnovers will need to be kept to a minimum.
• Jacobsen will make the Big Ten All-Freshman team.
• There will be games when Myles Colvin plays 20-plus minutes and there will be games he barely plays at all, similar to last season. It may depend on the opponent and the “hot hand.”
• Camden Heide‘s value will lie most in his rebounding, screening and defensive versatility off the bench.
• Matt Painter will keep Easter-egging good-natured, harmless profanity into his post-game press conferences, a reflection of a coach as comfortable with his place in the world as anyone in college basketball.
• Purdue will endure its fewest referees’ trips to the monitor since before Isaac Haas showed up, but Jacobsen will be a frequent hook-and-hold target, especially as he gets stronger.