Purdue Basketball Summer Practice Primer: The Defense

In advance of one of the most promising seasons ever for Purdue basketball, the Boilermakers begin off-season practice Monday, June 9.

Purdue will have a real chance to again be outstanding offensively, but its key to really high-level success may lie more at the defensive end.

Below, GoldandBlack.com breaks down some relevant defensive layers Purdue may enhance or at least explore this summer.

HOW MUCH DOES SIZE CHANGE THINGS?

That’s maybe the most pertinent question of the off-season: Now that it’s no longer prohibitively small, does Purdue stick with the wrinkles it incorporated last season to try to cover up its deficiencies or return to its prior form?

The changes last season — doubling the post from the baseline and, in effect, putting Braden Smith in something of a freelancer role, stationing him in the lane to gum things up or allowing him to chase steals as a roving help defender — worked big-time over the first half of the Big Ten season, then crashed out in the second half, as opponents figured it out and some inconsistencies in Purdue’s attentiveness surfaced.

With real size again at center with Oscar Cluff and Daniel Jacobsen, the open wound Purdue needed to sew up schematically may now be a strength. Cluff comes to town as one of the top rebounders in the sport last season and Jacobsen returns to the floor bigger and stronger and capable of being a game-changing shot-blocker. He alone will block more shots in the first month of this season to come than the whole roster did this whole past season.

Purdue Basketball Summer Practice Primer: The Offense

The two 5 men will play drop coverage against ball screens, with dimensions enough to cover much more area than Purdue could last season. They’ll be defensive presences at the basket, and most importantly, really transform the Boilermakers in the defensive rebounding picture. That’s all projection but virtually a given. From rim-protection and rebounding-presence perspectives, there is nowhere to go but up.

So how much broad systematic tweaking will be necessary remains to be seen, but Purdue will be flexible from game to game, with the X-factor of Braden Smith‘s “low man” role. Purdue does not use its veteran point guard on the ball defensively very often for a variety of reasons and last season often stashed him in matchups where he could sit in the paint or roam as Purdue overloaded sides of the floor. In effect, it turned the deficiency of his size on defense into the strength that his speed, quickness, tenacity and anticipation provided. Smith nearly led the Big Ten in steals last season.

People will attack Smith, but maybe less so now that he’ll have either the 6-foot-11 Cluff or 7-3 Jacobsen behind him.

BALL PRESSURE

This isn’t necessarily a summer issue, but it will be paramount to Purdue’s defensive success. The Boilermakers will need to be good on the ball. This will be largely the purview of CJ Cox and Gicarri Harris, Purdue’s two main on-ball defenders who coaches hope will make significant jumps from Year 1 to Year 2. Both have immense defensive potential.

But while they are the first line of defense, ball pressure will be everyone’s domain, as everyone will be tasked with doing a better job containing the dribble, Purdue’s defensive Achilles last season when it was bad on D.

Caleb Furst’s defensive versatility will be missed, but offset by a wide margin by the back-line support perimeter defenders will now have at the rim.

But the mission statement defensively will be to stay out of rotations as much as possible, and that starts with ball pressure and one-on-one containment. Summer is for installing system and ironing out responsibilities, but system and assignments aren’t quite as urgently important when a defender just keeps his man in front of him.

FOUL WORRIES SOFTEN

Can Purdue’s best and most important guys play with peace of mind that if they pick up an early foul, the sky will not collapse on top of them? Maybe, though there’s not a ton of evidence that affected anything adversely last season.

Nevertheless, Purdue should have more viable alternatives to Kaufman-Renn or Smith should they need to come out, and a relatively flat either/or situation at both center and in the on-ball defender role. That’s an immense luxury provided everyone lives up.