Purdue Basketball routs Truman State in season's lone exhibition

Led by a dominant 23-point walk in the park from All-Big Ten center Zach Edey, Purdue cruised past Truman State 102-57 Wednesday night in Mackey Arena. It was the Boilermakers’ final competition before next week’s opener against Milwaukee.

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PDF: Purdue-Truman State statistics

Purdue led by 23 at halftime, then scored the first 10 of the second half en route to a lead that peaked at 48 points.

Off the bench, Trey Kaufman-Renn scored 15 points. Brandon Newman 13 and David Jenkins Jr. 12.

Purdue shot almost 60 percent for the game, turned the ball over just four times, was consistent from three (36 percent) and dominated the glass by roughly a 2.5-to-1 clip, with 18 offensive rebounds and 25 second-chance points.

PURDUE’S OFFENSE WAS SHARP

From the outset, a Purdue team with a whole bunch of new players — including two true freshman ball-handlers — looks relatively refined offensively, as the post entry game was razor sharp, getting Zach Edey going quickly and in no uncertain terms.

“Entering the ball into the post is something we worked on all off-season,” Edey said. “The group of guys we have, I think we work really well together naturally and I think that reflects on the court.”

Purdue weathered a blistering run of three-point shooting from Truman State by riding Edey, who scored or assisted (notably) on the Boilermakers’ first 11 points.

Meanwhile, the Boilermakers’ first turnover didn’t come until 10-and-a-half minutes had passed, and that was a defensive rebound lost out of bounds, so whether you even want to view that as a turnover, that can be debated.

“The mentality was just to value the basketball,” Newman said, “to value possessions. … The new guys are gaining experience on the fly and that’s where we come in as older guys to try to show them the way and help them along the way.”

Purdue, again, finished with just four turnovers, despite the litany of new faces and new roles playing out around Edey, the Boilermakers’ centerpiece. The passing was crisp, decision-making generally sound and outcomes satisfactory, as Purdue generated 56 points in the paint, made 10 threes and erased a ton of misses via the offensive glass.

It looks like Purdue has the raw materials here to be a pretty solid offensive team, even though it has so few proven weapons beyond Edey.

“Obviously we’ve really recruited toward guys’ skill levels in terms of being able to shoot and get decision-makers to raise our value as a team,” Coach Matt Painter said. “(Scoring) is not really a concern of mine because we have a lot of people (who can score). Even the people who didn’t score can score.

“It’s trying to find the right group who can defend, and I don’t know if anyone really jumped off the page tonight in terms of defensive prowess. That’s what we’re really concerned with: How can we beat quality people without just outscoring them?”

PURDUE SHOWED SIGNS OF EMERGING DEPTH

Scoring balance can be an overplayed metric during exhibition games, because of looming apples-to-oranges comparisons during the regular season, but on this night, a lot of players put their best foots forward beyond the five players — Zach Edey, Mason Gillis, Ethan Morton, Fletcher Loyer and Braden Smith — Painter has anointed as his season-opening starters.

Edey led all scorers, as he’ll do more than a few times this season. But all four of Purdue’s other double-digit scorers come off the bench, which accounted for 62 points.

Trey Kaufman-Renn scored in the mid-teens in both the Cincinnati scrimmage and against Truman State. The combination of him and Caleb Furst as that second-unit frontcourt looks like something Purdue can build around. While Edey and Mason Gillis combined for 32 points and 12 rebounds in roughly 35 total minutes; Furst and Kaufman-Renn totaled 26 and 12 over their combined 37-ish minutes. And for whatever it’s worth in a game like this, Purdue was +30 with Furst on the floor at center, +18 with Edey.

Meanwhile, David Jenkins Jr. and Brandon Newman gave the Boilermakers real scoring bite, 5-of-7 from three between them, but also efficient inside the arc on their limited opportunities. Newman made runners and pull-up mid-range jumpers and Jenkins an acrobatic reverse and-one that belied his powerful frame.

Newman, the Mackey Arena crowd again clearly invested in his success this season, played well off the bench, one of the best signs from this exhibition.

“It was my mentality and my mind set,” he said. “Coming off the bench knowing I have to be ready to go and effective right away, and then also having some plays drawn up for me and being able to get to my spot, elevate and knock the shot down, the stuff I’ve done a thousand times.

“Just from a mental standpoint, that was the difference for me, being ready to play coming off the bench.”

Jenkins’ first game in Mackey Arena went well, as well.

“I’ve never been part of a game like that,” he said. “Especially for an exhibition. (Furst) was asking me what it was like at my previous schools and I said, ‘We’d probably get that for like a rivalry game.’ I can only imagine what it’ll be like when we get into Big Ten play, play IU, things like that.”

A WORK IN PROGRESS ON D, AS EXPECTED

Truman State opened the game raining threes, making five of ’em a just a little more than six minutes, some of them contested. Whether those were breakdowns on Purdue’s part of simply the sports reality of good offense beating good defense, that’s for the film to decide.

But Painter wasn’t thrilled with his team’s defense, even though it was helped profoundly by solid offense, a flipped script from one of last season’s broad themes.

Truman State’s 57 points came without the benefit of a single score off a turnover.

Nevertheless …

“We have to get better defensively,” Painter said. “Their pace in what they did offensively gave us some problems, and they kind of picked on our lack of discipline.”