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Purdue needs Trey Kaufman-Renn standing still on screens so he's not sitting still on the bench

On3 imageby:Brian Neubert•about 9 hours•

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Purdue's Trey Kaufman-Renn
Trey Kaufman-Renn (Chad Krockover)

Purdue survived a scare Friday night against Indiana despite game-changing foul trouble for leading scorer Trey Kaufman-Renn, two of his four fouls coming on a pair of offensive fouls in the second half.

“The thing he’s trying to do is get (Braden Smith) open,” Coach Matt Painter said. “We work on screening a lot, and we work on the angles of screening a lot, and that’s important but it’s not worth his third and fourth fouls.”

Painter suggested both of Kaufman-Renn’s infractions were legitimate fouls.

“Come set. Be legal,” Painter said. “You can’t get ’em there at the end.”

But here’s the complicated part.

This isn’t chess-piece basketball anymore. These modern offenses are dynamic and dominated by intricate, precise and timing-dependent screening. You see it all the time where big men run into screens in order to bounce out of them and into pick-and-roll. Screens are often more hit-and-run than anything. It’s a game of setting screens, then re-setting screens, an elaborate dance of sorts.

“It can be super-difficult, especially with some of the screening actions we do where it looks like I’m going to set a screen,” Kaufman-Renn said, “but then flip around and set a (different) screen or act like I’m rolling, then set a screen. For big guys, it’s a little more difficult than some offenses.”

The IU game was like any other college basketball game these days where for every legal screen, there may be two where a screener may have his feet set but leans into the screen with his upper body, arms or a widened stance. There were probably dozens — by both teams — in the Purdue-Indiana game.

Under the letter of the law (posted below), any movement into a screen — anywhere from head to toe — constitutes an offensive foul, in which case this is akin to a traffic cop being able being free to pull over hundreds of cars a day going 70 in a 55.

That Kaufman-Renn’s two offensive fouls came during a portion of the game when fouls were heavily lop-sided in Purdue’s favor seemed very relevant at the time.

Nevertheless, Purdue needs Kaufman-Renn on the floor and screening cleaner, preferably not to a point his screens are so clean that the Boilermakers are at a disadvantaged based on what is so often not called.

“If it’s getting set a little earlier than I normally do or stopping a little short of where I normally do,” Kaufman-Renn said, “that’s what I need to do, especially when I was already in foul trouble. There are certain things you can do as a player to ensure you don’t get called.”

(From the official NCAA men’s basketball rulebook …)

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