It became a topic of mild debate during our in-game blog Tuesday night whether it would matter if Purdue had lost to Montevallo in its exhibition.
Sure, Purdue would have taken some crap over it and your friends to the south of here probably would have gotten their jollies over it, but the answer is just no. Who cares? It was only an exhibition.
Take that back, the real answer is we'd have to wait and see where things would go thereafter, but in the moment, it doesn't matter. No one is going to try to lose, but it's the same as irrelevant NFL preseason football. Much to Herm Edwards' chagrin, you're not always playing to win the game.
Let's be clear: If this were Michigan in January instead of Montevallo in October, Matt Painter isn't putting famously out-of-shape freshman Jay Simpson in the game with 14 minutes left in a tie ball game. He's not taking Terone Johnson off the floor and he's probably doing a bit more to get D.J. Byrd going. Byrd mostly turned the ball over tonight. Doesn't matter. Because no one - no one - expects that to be the case in a couple weeks, when it matters.
Had Painter played his starters the lion's share of the minutes and really played to win the game there more than likely would have been no discomfort whatsoever after halftime. Instead, with Painter coaching to sort out personnel and force certain freshmen to run up and down the floor a bunch of times while remaining upright, the game got close. Real close.
Fortunately for Purdue on this night, Terone Johnson is pretty good.
I don't want to talk out of both sides of my mouth here and say in one sentence that exhibitions don't matter, but individual performances do. But what you saw out of Terone Johnson Tuesday is what I suspect you'll see this season. He was excellent, very aggressive, noticeably settled in, with a jump shot that actually goes in now. And I'll be a bit surprised if he doesn't shoot 70 percent at the line this season.
Drawing any conclusions on this team after one exhibition is probably a fool's proposition, but I'll say this: Those freshmen can play.
You are just going to have to accept some mistakes this season and set your jaws as fans to watch this team lose some games, but in the long run, this group's ceiling is high.
There was nothing tonight that was anything new about any of the freshmen, but rather just a glimpse of it in an actual game.
Ronnie Johnson turned the ball over a couple times, but you only take note of it now because Purdue hasn't turned the ball over hardly at all the past few years. He was really good in the open floor especially Tuesday night and it was kind of neat to see him and Terone Johnson twice connect on 2-on-1 situations in transition.
Hammons touched the ball around the basket three times on offense and scored off each of them. And he grabbed five rebounds and blocked a shot in just 16 minutes. Of course, Montevallo probably looked at him the way you'd look at the Statue of Liberty, but still
Donnie Hale made jumpers and blocked shots and Rapheal Davis looked like a guy who's going to be productive when he settles in; one thing is obvious, and that's that he's not going to be cheated. He's going to get his shots up.
Simpson, there is no telling. He hardly did anything in nine minutes, all but one of them in the second half, but not sure you should have expected him to, considering how behind he's been. My lasting memory of his game tonight was him missing a jumper. That's it.
Painter does not want to redshirt him. That much is obvious.
"He gives you something those other guys don't have," the coach has said over and over.
That said, Purdue has six big men and can't possibly play them all. There's no plain-to-see redshirt candidate if it's not Simpson. I don't think they'd redshirt Jacob Lawson as a sophomore, but you never know.
But six guys can't play all that much in only two spots.
Travis Carroll played the fewest minutes of the three centers, but that seemed like a product of getting Sandi Marcius and Hammons settled. Marcius is hot right now and keeping his momentum going is important; Hammons needs experience.
There's a role for Carroll on this team; whether that's every game, we'll see. The centers and big men in general might be subject to matchups. Carroll might suit a certain offensive arrangement better than Marcius or Hammons on some nights; on others, Lawson might be better equipped to guard a certain guy than Hale is. We'll see.
Purdue didn't dominate defensively by any means ? Montevallo did seriously make a lot of tough, tough shots; that's not spin ? but at the end of the day, it did force 10 more turnovers than it allowed assists, held the Falcons under 38-percent shooting; and blocked eight shots. Last season, the Boilermakers blocked an average of 3.1 shots per game.
So it's not all bad.
The blocks and steals are going to be important for a team that could really stand to make things a little easier on itself offensively by generating as many easy buckets as it can. Purdue had only six fast-break points Tuesday night according to the official stats, but got some of those quasi-transitional, before-the-defense-is-set points too.
But looking at Tuesday night, what jumps out is rebounding.
A four-rebound margin against a team like this isn't enough, as Painter alluded to when he basically called his team "soft" after the game, a comment I'm sure he won't mind his guys seeing in the paper tomorrow morning. When coaches talk to us, they're talking to their players, too.
As many transitions as Purdue is going through this season, both in its roster and in how it'll play, there's one big one.
Purdue may be big, but it has to play that way also.
This was a skill team last year, and for a couple years before that really.
For its size to matter, this team has to make it happen. To beat Michigan State this year, for example, it will have to beat the Spartans at their own game.
Purdue can't be soft.
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Sure, Purdue would have taken some crap over it and your friends to the south of here probably would have gotten their jollies over it, but the answer is just no. Who cares? It was only an exhibition.
Take that back, the real answer is we'd have to wait and see where things would go thereafter, but in the moment, it doesn't matter. No one is going to try to lose, but it's the same as irrelevant NFL preseason football. Much to Herm Edwards' chagrin, you're not always playing to win the game.
Let's be clear: If this were Michigan in January instead of Montevallo in October, Matt Painter isn't putting famously out-of-shape freshman Jay Simpson in the game with 14 minutes left in a tie ball game. He's not taking Terone Johnson off the floor and he's probably doing a bit more to get D.J. Byrd going. Byrd mostly turned the ball over tonight. Doesn't matter. Because no one - no one - expects that to be the case in a couple weeks, when it matters.
Had Painter played his starters the lion's share of the minutes and really played to win the game there more than likely would have been no discomfort whatsoever after halftime. Instead, with Painter coaching to sort out personnel and force certain freshmen to run up and down the floor a bunch of times while remaining upright, the game got close. Real close.
Fortunately for Purdue on this night, Terone Johnson is pretty good.
I don't want to talk out of both sides of my mouth here and say in one sentence that exhibitions don't matter, but individual performances do. But what you saw out of Terone Johnson Tuesday is what I suspect you'll see this season. He was excellent, very aggressive, noticeably settled in, with a jump shot that actually goes in now. And I'll be a bit surprised if he doesn't shoot 70 percent at the line this season.
Drawing any conclusions on this team after one exhibition is probably a fool's proposition, but I'll say this: Those freshmen can play.
You are just going to have to accept some mistakes this season and set your jaws as fans to watch this team lose some games, but in the long run, this group's ceiling is high.
There was nothing tonight that was anything new about any of the freshmen, but rather just a glimpse of it in an actual game.
Ronnie Johnson turned the ball over a couple times, but you only take note of it now because Purdue hasn't turned the ball over hardly at all the past few years. He was really good in the open floor especially Tuesday night and it was kind of neat to see him and Terone Johnson twice connect on 2-on-1 situations in transition.
Hammons touched the ball around the basket three times on offense and scored off each of them. And he grabbed five rebounds and blocked a shot in just 16 minutes. Of course, Montevallo probably looked at him the way you'd look at the Statue of Liberty, but still
Donnie Hale made jumpers and blocked shots and Rapheal Davis looked like a guy who's going to be productive when he settles in; one thing is obvious, and that's that he's not going to be cheated. He's going to get his shots up.
Simpson, there is no telling. He hardly did anything in nine minutes, all but one of them in the second half, but not sure you should have expected him to, considering how behind he's been. My lasting memory of his game tonight was him missing a jumper. That's it.
Painter does not want to redshirt him. That much is obvious.
"He gives you something those other guys don't have," the coach has said over and over.
That said, Purdue has six big men and can't possibly play them all. There's no plain-to-see redshirt candidate if it's not Simpson. I don't think they'd redshirt Jacob Lawson as a sophomore, but you never know.
But six guys can't play all that much in only two spots.
Travis Carroll played the fewest minutes of the three centers, but that seemed like a product of getting Sandi Marcius and Hammons settled. Marcius is hot right now and keeping his momentum going is important; Hammons needs experience.
There's a role for Carroll on this team; whether that's every game, we'll see. The centers and big men in general might be subject to matchups. Carroll might suit a certain offensive arrangement better than Marcius or Hammons on some nights; on others, Lawson might be better equipped to guard a certain guy than Hale is. We'll see.
Purdue didn't dominate defensively by any means ? Montevallo did seriously make a lot of tough, tough shots; that's not spin ? but at the end of the day, it did force 10 more turnovers than it allowed assists, held the Falcons under 38-percent shooting; and blocked eight shots. Last season, the Boilermakers blocked an average of 3.1 shots per game.
So it's not all bad.
The blocks and steals are going to be important for a team that could really stand to make things a little easier on itself offensively by generating as many easy buckets as it can. Purdue had only six fast-break points Tuesday night according to the official stats, but got some of those quasi-transitional, before-the-defense-is-set points too.
But looking at Tuesday night, what jumps out is rebounding.
A four-rebound margin against a team like this isn't enough, as Painter alluded to when he basically called his team "soft" after the game, a comment I'm sure he won't mind his guys seeing in the paper tomorrow morning. When coaches talk to us, they're talking to their players, too.
As many transitions as Purdue is going through this season, both in its roster and in how it'll play, there's one big one.
Purdue may be big, but it has to play that way also.
This was a skill team last year, and for a couple years before that really.
For its size to matter, this team has to make it happen. To beat Michigan State this year, for example, it will have to beat the Spartans at their own game.
Purdue can't be soft.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2012. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
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