Gold and Black Radio: Purdue season opener talk and more
Host Derek Schultz and GoldandBlack.com’s Brian Neubert talk about the start of Purdue’s 2024-25 season and much more in our weekly podcast feature.
More on Purdue’s win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
ON THE FRONTCOURT (From Brian’s Takeaways)
Raleigh Burgess not redshirting muddies an already fluid situation even more. Now that he’s playing, he needs to be playing, inevitably at the cost of someone older’s minutes.
This could be a real situational-use season for multiple players. That rarely materializes — coaches tend to prefer the comfort and continuity of an established, consistent rotation — but this year might be an exception.
Freshman center Daniel Jacobsen was an integral part of this win, his shot-blocking playing a real role, among other things. But as the games get more physical, not every night is going to be his night. There may be games Purdue needs Will Berg‘s big body out there, but also where his bull-in-a-china-shop tendencies might be problematic. That says nothing of Burgess or Caleb Furst, who might earn more consideration when Purdue’s bigs are tested more on the perimeter in ball-screen defense.
And then the wings. Myles Colvin was a flame-thrower tonight in the first half. Might that be a situation where if the hand is hot, you ride it? What about if it’s not? Or when an opponent pressures and forces Purdue into playing exclusively three guards.
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Then, Camden Heide is kind of a little bit wing and a little bit power forward right now, his minutes bound to shake loose amidst the moving parts around him. When Purdue inevitably drifts toward Kaufman-Renn playing more than he is now at the 5, that will ripple all throughout the rotation.
Some nights, any of these guys may play a ton. Other nights they may play a little, in some cases not at all.
The question is going to be: When Purdue needs this guy or that guy who barely played the last game, how ready are they? There will be no hiding from that maturity/professionalism gauge.
