BoilerMKT

Outstanding job, guys. Knew it would be a grind. Figured you would limit the bigs, but was surprised how well you were able to do so without exposing too much else. You needed to hit the open threes and you did. Incredible poise and patience. Keep it going!

Geez, that's worse than someone having the audacity to set their wedding date in the midst of March Madness. The people you're helping must be IU fans. They never have anything to do this time of year.

My favorite part of that is how for long stretches Verne and Clark don't even try to talk over it...just let it happen. BTW, my first college basketball game was also at Hinkle in 1970--Ball State at Butler. Checked to see if Purdue and North Texas had ever played, thinking the answer was no. But, there was actually one at Mackey in December, 1970, which Purdue won 90-73. That would have been the first year post-Rick Mount. The Super Pit also looks like a good place to see a game. I guess our two arenas are both going to be on TV the next couple of nights.

Yeah, he's been there about 4 years now, maybe 5. He is in charge of the defense. Painter runs it like a football staff. Lutz for defense, Shewsberry (new Penn St HC) for offense and Brandon Brantley works with the bigs and player personnel in general. Before Shrewberry, the OC was Greg Gary (my cousin), who is now the HC at Mercer, who almost copied you guys with the 4-game tourney run, but run out of gas the last couple minutes vs. UNC Greensboro. Lutz will likely land an HC job this year or next.

LOL. Be patient. I'm sure a couple of our village idiots will show up between now and game time.

Thanks for the response. If he passes well out of it, Bell is the likely beneficiary and it looks like he's capable of knocking them down from the perimeter, so that may work well for you. Pretty sure we'll try doubling, though, because it looked like Simmons was effective one-on-one vs. Bassey, at least in the first half. Purdue is very analytically driven, so I'm certain they will focus a ton of attention on Hamlet. Eric Hunter is really good on the ball--held Notre Dame's leading scorer Prentiss Hubb to 0 points, forced Minnesota's Marcus Carr into a 2-for-13 night, held Wisconsin's D'Mitrik Trice to 2-for-10 one game after he had lit Illinois up for 29 points. Hunter and Hamlet are essentially the same size (and both left-handed), so that battle will be very interesting to watch and may be the most important matchup in the game.

Great story! I remember Purdue recruited Fabian White a little bit. CJ Walker, currently a senior PG for Ohio State originally committed to Purdue and then backed out, so we "settled" for Carsen. 🙂 I think that turned out OK. Those AAU teams with Carsen and D'Aaron Fox had to be just ridiculous. You weren't at the game where he hit like 13-15 threes on the way to 50+ points, were you?

My amateur assessment, albeit based on just watching your championship game is while Bassey is undoubtedly a better athlete, Trevion is a more-skilled, harder-working and smarter basketball player. Where that will show up is offensive rebounding and patience in the post, waiting for the defense to show itself. It's why his assist rate is 5x Bassey's. That said, I do think NT will do an effective job of denying post entries and forcing us to take a lot of threes With Edey, sometimes it's easier to just throw it over the top of everyone and let him handle it. Watch out for backscreens leading to alley-oops. A couple questions for you guys. On the occasions that you do feed it down to Simmons, how well does he handle double teams? He will see them, pretty much always coming from the 4 spot until he proves he can beat them. Also, if Hamlet is made to be inefficient, what is Plan B? Who's the most likely to pick up the slack? He is definitely very crafty, has good vision and an excellent floater game, but he doesn't appear to be lightning quick, which is what we sometimes struggle with.

TJ, I'm MTobin on GBI

Just noticed you guys are in the same conference with ODU, so that will make it Purdue's second straight CUSA opener. In '19, we played the Monarchs in a 3-14 matchup, winning 61-48. It was not a thing of beauty. We had to adjust on the fly when our starting PG rolled an ankle in pre-game warmups. They held their own rebounding, but we kept them to 27% shooting. Game was tight for the first fifteen minutes, but the last five of the first and first five of the second saw us blow it to 20 and then just trade baskets the rest of the way. All of which has nothing to do with the upcoming game. ODU profiled similarly to NT on defense, but was much worse offensively. And, Purdue was a much more 3-point reliant team in that season (remember Carsen Edwards and Ryan Cline?). In terms of total points scored, however, I won't be surprised if this game is within the same range as that one.

I should clarify a bit and say we try to get them touches. With Trevion, that does not have to be on the low block due to his passing ability. There is a lot of dribble handoff action with Trevion handling the ball in the high post and hitting cutters to the basket. On low post feeds, our guards are big enough to be able to enter the ball most of the time, and if you devote too much attention to trying to eliminate it then either Ivey attacking or Stefanovic/Newman being open from three could become an issue. Again, fascinating chess match in store. Painter has a lot of respect for McCasland and knows how hard NT is going to play.

If by that you mean playing Williams and Edey together, I'd say almost nil. It happened a little bit briefly in the BTT game vs. OSU, but that was when Liddell for OSU had 4 fouls late. It doesn't work well defensively.

Thanks for the overview. This is going to be a really interesting chess match. Your comment about Simmons inconsistent defense and the lack of comfort with his backup are worth noting. That will really get tested, because Purdue is the most post-heavy offense in the country. We look to enter the ball into the post on damn near every possession and there will be a focus on drawing fouls on Simmons. Williams draws 5.9 fouls per 40 and Edey 7.2. Would you go small ball with Bell as the 5? That could create issues for us. You'd have a hard time stopping anything inside, but if you were trading 3s for 2s you could gain an advantage for a while at least. Defensively, we work hard to fight over the top of screens and do not hedge hard on them. If Hamlet can get into the lane all day, it will cause us a lot of problems. We try to force the ball to one side and keep it there. Once we get into rotations, a lot of freshman (and junior) mistakes start showing up.

He hit 11-14 in that game 🙂

Correct. First-round exits in '15 and '16, both brutal with blown late leads. But since, Sweet 16 in '17 and '18 and Elite 8 in '19 and a Virginia miracle away from the Final 4. Prior to those '15 and '16 losses, we had won 14 straight first-rounders spanning the Keady and Painter eras.