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Mailbag: Origins of Hoops Spring Transactions

On3 imageby:Brian Neubert•04/29/25•

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New Purdue center Oscar Cluff
New Purdue center Oscar Cluff (Imagn Sports Images)

Throughout the off-season, GoldandBlack.com will run its long-standing Purdue Basketball Mailbag series, taking reader questions in hopes of diving deeper into more off-the-radar sorts of topics.

Today’s topic: Purdue’s off-season comings and goings.

(Questions: DM @Brian_GoldandBlack.com or e-mail [email protected])

Q: I have a chicken or the egg question, and I apologize if you have touched on this already and I missed it.

So at the end of the season, Painter has his sit down with all of his players and Colvin and Heide decide to enter the transfer portal. And Purdue goes out and gets 3 more guys in the transfer portal. Obviously a starting 5 was a huge need for this team, but was the plan always to go out and try for a few more players, thus leading Colvin and Heide to enter the portal. Or did they decide to enter the portal, thus making Painter need to seek out additional transfers for next years team?

GoldandBlack.com Purdue Basketball Mailbag
GoldandBlack.com Purdue Basketball Mailbag

Answer: It didn’t matter who left, Purdue was going to need to go get help for next season no matter what. Its lack of size this season was an anvil tied to its ankle all year and had to — had to — get fixed by any means necessary, and that reality was made even more urgent by Daniel Jacobsen‘s and Raleigh Burgess‘ respective injury situations.

So the size piece of this was an absolute must, and I think getting another ball-handler was more a want than a must. It was a must back in December and January, but things got better. But it still was a big deal to get another true ball-handler who can do all the same stuff Braden Smith does systematically. Purdue should be as pressure-proof as can be next season. So you basically got a potentially high-impact newcomer as a freshmen and Smith’s successor in one fell swoop. Just an absolute coup. People should view Omer Mayer as Purdue landing the equivalent of an elite 2026 point guard a year early.

Liam Murphy was the one that wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the departures. They had to get another forward after Camden Heide left.

A point to reiterate: The two rotation guys who left had no clear path to bigger roles. As good as those guys were and as as capable of more as both may have been, they had their chances this past season to lock things down and Heide was facing the reality of TKR now consuming 80 percent of the 4-man minutes and Colvin was still in a logjam with Gicarri Harris and CJ Cox that would have gotten more congested with Mayer, who can factor into that role too this season.

Less might end up being more there, because sometimes when a glut of players clears out, it brings more out of those that remain. I always use the example of Dakota Mathias and Ryan Cline really getting better after Kendall Stephens departed. Purdue was playing too many guys there prior, to nobody’s benefit. I think that maybe an even greater minutes share now might bring a bit more out of Harris and Cox, and Purdue is going to need one or the other on the floor at all times for defense on the ball. Both those guys can get 20 minutes a game a lot of nights now and that may help them.

I’ll say it again: No one liked seeing Colvin or Heide go, but Purdue is way better now than it was leaving Lucas Oil Stadium a few weeks back.

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