Five Takes: Purdue Basketball's preseason

Purdue’s 2022-2023 basketball season is here, with the private scrimmage against Cincinnati already in the books and Wednesday’s exhibition against Truman State looming. With that in mind, GoldandBlack.com breaks down a few key impressions from preseason practice.

Here goes …

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

There’s simply no way around freshman guards Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer wielding major influence over Purdue’s outcomes this season, for better and worse, but more likely, it seems, better than worse.

Both young guards project as starters with high-volume-minutes and heavy-responsibility types of roles.

Purdue is extremely high on both rookie guards, but has generally couched its praise within standard unease about their total lack of college experience.

That said, both were excellent during the preseason, both are advanced in their basketball savvy and knowledge and both bring a very distinct confidence to the floor that should at the very least put the minds of those around them at ease. They’re highly unlikely to back down from a higher level of competition or daunting road environments.

Both seem ready, or at least as ready as any player in their positions can be. What “ready” means for them, we’ll find out. This is not a team with so many established veterans that freshmen can ease into things. Smith and Loyer both figure to be excellent players at Purdue at some point, maybe now.

THIS WILL BE A WILLING PASSING TEAM

As good — and as supremely talented — as Purdue’s team last season was, the ball sometimes stuck, belying some of the best offense the Boilermakers have run in recent years with veteran groups wired to share the ball.

While this may not be a “veteran” group, per se, it will be one naturally inclined to share the basketball. Braden Smith and Ethan Morton in particular are distributors by nature. Fletcher Loyer is a perimeter gunner if there ever was one, but also a highly skilled passer and playmaker. Caleb Furst hasn’t had much of a chance to show his keen passing skill, but will this season. Mason Gillis, quietly, has been an exceptional entryman and low-volume offensive player. Brian Waddell, to whatever extent he plays this season after injuries have sidetracked him, is another high-IQ offensive piece.

Purdue has a lot of connective tissue on this team. It needs scorers to emerge beyond Zach Edey, but the willingness to play out possessions looking for shots should be there.

Thing is, this group has minimal experience playing together, so that willingness to share the ball is not yet complemented by the chemistry that’ll come once a bunch of games are in the books.

Think back to Vince Edwards, Dakota Mathias, PJ Thompson, Ryan Cline, etc., how much fans appreciated their willingness to pass up good shots for great shots. Well, that didn’t happen overnight.

For this team, they’ll need to build offensive chemistry quickly and at minimal turnover cost, because if there was ever a Boilermaker team that’ll need to beef up the value of its average offensive possession, this is it. Turnovers can’t occur the way they did last season, for the sake of both the offense and the defense.

THIS WILL BE A PHYSICAL TEAM

Yeah, there are young guards and that will matter, but Zach Edey may be the most daunting physical matchup in college basketball — it will be imperative that he leverage that on offense and the glass, especially to start games — while the rest of Purdue’s frontcourt is straight out of Peak Michigan State central casting. Mason Gillis is a tone-setter in this regard, Trey Kaufman-Renn will relish contact and Caleb Furst pairs his legitimate size and plus athleticism and quickness with an optimal motor.

This could be one of the better frontcourts in college basketball, but also a really physical one.

That said, that element does extend to the perimeter, where Ethan Morton is 6-foot-6, Brandon Newman is 200-plus pounds and newcomer David Jenkins Jr. is built like a middle linebacker, size that can come to the forefront, especially in defensive switches.

The two freshman guards will probably be hunted by offenses at times, as is often life for the youngest players on the floor.

But this will also be one of Purdue’s most physical, and most interchangeable rosters, as well.

TREY KAUFMAN-RENN GIVES PURDUE A NEW OFFENSIVE DIMENSION

Purdue has plenty of connective pieces on offense, but needs finishers — i.e. scorers — to emerge apart from Edey.

Enter Trey Kaufman-Renn, who led the Boilermakers in scoring against Cincinnati behind closed doors on Saturday. That’s not a reasonable expectation for the season as a whole, but does punctuate the fact that the redshirt freshman could give Purdue a shot of offensive punch in tandem with Caleb Furst. Those two frontcourt assets would seem to have considerable complementary potential.

Purdue’s not often, if ever, had a player like this, a forward capable of bully-balling smaller players on the block but also terrorizing bigger, slower matchups off the dribble, facing the basket.

Purdue’s going to have to scheme to get Kaufman-Renn touches in space around the basket, and Furst opportunities to get open threes and clear dives to the basket and slips out of offensive actions, but there is some real potential baked in with these two to seek favorable matchups and twist the knife on them pretty effectively.

PURDUE SHOULD BE A STRONG REBOUNDING TEAM

The physicality mentioned above is paired with the tenacity of Gillis and Furst, the strength of Kaufman-Renn and the dynamic rebounding potential Edey possesses, atypical of a player his size. Edey is not only gigantic and an elite consumer of space, but also agile enough, relatively speaking, to rebound outside his area now and again.

Don’t be surprised if Purdue is again a very good offensive rebounding team, but also effective rebounding from the guard positions, which comes down to effort as much as anything. Ethan Morton and Brandon Newman should be above-average rebounders as wings. And here’s guessing that Braden Smith will be a really high-level loose-ball-chaser from the point guard position. Systematically, Purdue does put its point guards in positions to offensive rebound, but with transition defense being an enormous emphasis for this group, we’ll see how carefully Smith will be asked to pick his spots.