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Welcome to this week's “BOILING OVER,” GoldandBlack.com’s weekly information-clearinghouse and analysis column meant for our site members and site members only. We appreciate everyone’s cooperation in helping us keep what is sometimes delicate or proprietary information confined to this message board. This feature allows us to be more flexible in our reporting, to our readers' benefit, and we lose that ability if we can't keep this feature secure and the value of our site's membership at its peak. Additionally, we address recruiting and hiring processes in-depth and often without filter in this feature and we do it behind a subscription-protected barrier for a reason, in hopes of avoiding situations where our reporting can impact the recruiting process, which can happen occasionally.
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Apologies again for the delay today, but just wanted to get as much in this as we could.
PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING
Big-time unofficial visitor at Purdue today, as Kentucky 2025 center Malachi Moreno and his mother were in town for the afternoon, then watched practice.
This was the potential five-star prospect's second visit to West Lafayette in the past few weeks, as he also came up for Purdue's elite camp in August.
As with all 2025s, long way to go here, and Moreno will be a national recruit, but he has spoken highly of Purdue early and obviously backed up his words with action by making a couple trips up from Georgetown, Ky. Purdue was his first big offer and that has bought them a certain amount of cachet with the big man, who's well on his way to 7-feet, but also can really dribble and do a lot of different things.
Couple other notes ...
When Purdue has its fan day scrimmage on Oct. 22, a couple of visitors should be 2025 target E.J. Walker and in-state underclassmen Dezmon Briscoe and Azavier Robinson, who I think may be offer candidates before long. (BN)
PURDUE FOOTBALL RECRUITING
Months after being left without a quarterback commitment for the 2023 class, Purdue has ID'd a midseason target, offering post-grad Ryan Browne today, a few weeks before he visits for the Nebraska game.
Don't want to get ahead of ourselves here before we've even heard from Browne, but the Purdue offer would seem like a big one for him and the visit a chance for Purdue to maybe get him committed. QBs tend to what to know where they're going early, and that's a market that can sort of run dry this time of year, at least until Coaching Change Musical Chairs starts.
Purdue's plan ever since Rickie Collins decommitted has been to hit the portal for a QB, and if Purdue does land Browne maybe that's still the case, because as of right now, Purdue only has two quarterbacks slated to be on scholarship next season (Brady Allen and Mike Alaimo) and Jeff Brohm's preferred number has always seemed to be four. (BN)
PURDUE BASKETBALL
A few notes based off what we've been told and/or have seen this week.
• Caleb Furst has continued shooting the ball exceptionally well from three-point range to the point 'you're shocked when he missed,' per one coach.
• Brian Waddell is fully cleared and all that and practicing in full, but still not being viewed as 100-percent himself. May take some time with him to get back to the trajectory he seemed to be on before he got hurt. Tough break.
• Press break and in-bounding against pressure have been significant emphases, as Purdue's preparing for people to really want to test their young guards.
• All arrows still pointing up on Braden Smith, who coaches love. They've been on him to be more assertive in taking shots that are there for him to take and he looked damn good doing it today.
• Brandon Newman tried to practice today despite having a sore back but was mostly off to the side, but he's had a good preseason by every account. Matt Painter said today that if he "plays to his strengths," he could be an All-Big Ten player, but there's still some things he needs to prove in that regard.
• William Berg isn't going to play this year, but he looked good today, I thought. Carson Barrett was really good today also.
• Can't really say any more about Fletcher Loyer than we already have: He's been very good and looks ready to help them quite a bit this season.
Standard reminder that just because a player is not mentioned here, that does not mean he's terrible or transferring, nor is me mentioning Carson Barrett an indictment of anyone else.
PURDUE FOOTBALL
We've been negligent in providing any PFF data on Purdue's opponents prior to their meetings, so for the sake of some extra content here every week, we'll do that here.
On Maryland ...
• Throwing the ball 20-plus yards in the air, Taulia Tagovailoa is 9-of-20 this season — but there have been a couple of drops — with three touchdowns and three picks and has been poor throwing the deep ball to his right, with an atrocious QB rating.
Otherwise, he's graded very well this season, especially when blitzed. All four of his interceptions this season have come when he has not been blitzed.
• The Terps are using play-action on more than 38 percent of their dropbacks and running screens more than 20 percent of the time.
Add this all up and it suggests Purdue's going to have judicious about pressure once again.
• In the run game, Maryland averages 4.2 yards after contact, which Purdue will want to cut In half, as it did at Minnesota.
Maryland has scored gains of 30 or more yards in the run game in virtually every direction.
• Corner Jakorian Bennett has allowed a team-high 226 receiving yards, an average of 15 yards per catch, and graded pretty average in coverage.
SMU got 114 yards off six receptions on seven targets against him.
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