CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - All season, it's been very difficult to write about Purdue's defense, because when you write stuff, you normally want there to be data to support whatever you say.
Most of this season, to me, Purdue has looked like a team with deficiencies on defense, meaningful ones. Yet all season, the data has engaged in a vicious yelling match with the eye-ball test.
Sunday in Champaign, they saw eye-to-eye. The look test and the results jibed.
Purdue gave up 84 points to Illinois. The top two Illini scorers, Malcolm Hill and Kendrick Nunn, combined for 62 percent of those points, a total of 52.
Sometimes, coaches will be cool with opponents' offensive alphas getting their numbers if they're inefficient. Well, Hill and Nunn scored those 52 points on 17-of-27 shooting, 5-of-7 from three-point range, with just four turnovers, a respectable number given their usage.
This is the second game in a row Purdue's gotten torched by a wing, last game's being Michigan's Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman (which I continue to type in and say just to flaunt the fact that I no longer have to look it up to make sure I have it right). Throw in Butler's Roosevelt Jones' un-guardability for Purdue and you see that these guys are struggling to guard good wings when Rapheal Davis can't do it because he's guarding someone else. (If you want to call Jones a "wing." I don't know what to call him.)
I know, Davis got torched by Jarrod Uthoff and he probably gave up some points tonight here and there, but in other games lately, it's been opponents just attacking whoever Davis isn't guarding.
Purdue doesn't have a second reliable wing defender right now to guard somebody good.
Kendall Stephens has improved defensively, but the past two games hasn't looked anything like that guy. He has great length, but has to use it by closing out hard on people.
I know that AAU is to the Big Ten what backyard Wiffle ball is to Game 7, but basketball is basketball and I have never covered a player who blocked more three-pointers in AAU than Stephens did, but he's not putting those pterodactyl arms to best use if he's giving a stationary Duncan Robinson too much room against Michigan or not closing out as hard as can be on Kendrick Nunn to start the second half.
The goal for Purdue - and the reason its numbers are good defensively - is to leverage its size and make opponents try to cross that bridge when they come to it.
It's not just Stephens. I don't want to sound like I'm picking on him because anecdotal evidence is fresh in mind, but Dakota Mathias, Ryan Cline, Vince Edwards, whoever else … Purdue just needs somebody to pick things up defensively on the wing, because Purdue can't clone Davis.
You see the recruiting emphasis on offensive skill (i.e. shooters) over athleticism showing up right now on D for Purdue.
Purdue's history defensively is that of aggressiveness. Over time and due to factors related to both personnel and rules changes, that identity has changed. Gone are the days of Boilermaker bigs blitzing ball screens, then sprinting back to the rim, and gone are the days of point guards trying to crawl into the shirt of opposing ball-handlers as soon as they catch an in-bound. Purdue is actually in the very bottom percentile in college basketball in forcing turnovers.
Again, Purdue has had to adjust, to both the conditions on the ground officiating-wise and its personnel.
Matt Painter rolled the dice a bit with this massive-lineup model he devised to get Caleb Swanigan to Purdue, doubling down on a very good team in hopes of coming up with a great one. As part of it, Purdue got bigger but made an already-less-than-dynamic roster athletically a bit slower by moving a bunch of people down a position classification to make room for a 1985-style power forward. There's no question Swanigan makes Purdue better, but that doesn't mean it had to be a smooth transition.
Purdue got bigger while everybody is playing smaller. Hell, I think Illinois' rash of injuries up front helped it tonight, because if the Illini are playing traditional posts instead of jump-shooting bigs and guards, who knows how this game plays out?
Like Illinois, which countered the Boilermakers' ultimate size with, basically, four guards and one big who could shooter jumpers over size. When those bigs weren't making jumpers, the threat of them doing so had one of the game's most influential shot-blockers floating 18 feet from the basket, powerless to do anything when Illinois smoked Purdue off the dribble and claimed the lane.
All told, Purdue's vulnerabilities on defense - the ones the numbers cloak - were laid bare.
But Purdue didn't lose tonight solely because Illinois played small and its bigs made a bunch of jump shots.
It lost because it had no answers for Hill and Nunn when it needed answers, not when Davis was guarding one but not the other.
(I'll go back and watch the game again but my instant recall - and I had a tough vantage point at State Farm Center - has me thinking Davis didn't give up but a fraction of those points Illinois' top two scorers totaled.)
It lost because most of its 16 turnovers were of dead-ball variety - including an egregious six offensive fouls - and Illinois still scored 24 points off them, suggesting that having its defense set didn't make all that big a different from past games that were turned by turnovers.
Purdue has to get this figured out. Matt Painter has to get this figured out, because the Boilermakers aren't going to score the way they scored on Michigan every night out.
Seventy points on the road should be enough in the Big Ten to not lose by more than a dozen.
I will repeat, though: It is Jan. 11. There are plenty of games to be played, plenty of improvement that can be made.
Most of this season, to me, Purdue has looked like a team with deficiencies on defense, meaningful ones. Yet all season, the data has engaged in a vicious yelling match with the eye-ball test.
Sunday in Champaign, they saw eye-to-eye. The look test and the results jibed.
Purdue gave up 84 points to Illinois. The top two Illini scorers, Malcolm Hill and Kendrick Nunn, combined for 62 percent of those points, a total of 52.
Sometimes, coaches will be cool with opponents' offensive alphas getting their numbers if they're inefficient. Well, Hill and Nunn scored those 52 points on 17-of-27 shooting, 5-of-7 from three-point range, with just four turnovers, a respectable number given their usage.
This is the second game in a row Purdue's gotten torched by a wing, last game's being Michigan's Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman (which I continue to type in and say just to flaunt the fact that I no longer have to look it up to make sure I have it right). Throw in Butler's Roosevelt Jones' un-guardability for Purdue and you see that these guys are struggling to guard good wings when Rapheal Davis can't do it because he's guarding someone else. (If you want to call Jones a "wing." I don't know what to call him.)
I know, Davis got torched by Jarrod Uthoff and he probably gave up some points tonight here and there, but in other games lately, it's been opponents just attacking whoever Davis isn't guarding.
Purdue doesn't have a second reliable wing defender right now to guard somebody good.
Kendall Stephens has improved defensively, but the past two games hasn't looked anything like that guy. He has great length, but has to use it by closing out hard on people.
I know that AAU is to the Big Ten what backyard Wiffle ball is to Game 7, but basketball is basketball and I have never covered a player who blocked more three-pointers in AAU than Stephens did, but he's not putting those pterodactyl arms to best use if he's giving a stationary Duncan Robinson too much room against Michigan or not closing out as hard as can be on Kendrick Nunn to start the second half.
The goal for Purdue - and the reason its numbers are good defensively - is to leverage its size and make opponents try to cross that bridge when they come to it.
It's not just Stephens. I don't want to sound like I'm picking on him because anecdotal evidence is fresh in mind, but Dakota Mathias, Ryan Cline, Vince Edwards, whoever else … Purdue just needs somebody to pick things up defensively on the wing, because Purdue can't clone Davis.
You see the recruiting emphasis on offensive skill (i.e. shooters) over athleticism showing up right now on D for Purdue.
Purdue's history defensively is that of aggressiveness. Over time and due to factors related to both personnel and rules changes, that identity has changed. Gone are the days of Boilermaker bigs blitzing ball screens, then sprinting back to the rim, and gone are the days of point guards trying to crawl into the shirt of opposing ball-handlers as soon as they catch an in-bound. Purdue is actually in the very bottom percentile in college basketball in forcing turnovers.
Again, Purdue has had to adjust, to both the conditions on the ground officiating-wise and its personnel.
Matt Painter rolled the dice a bit with this massive-lineup model he devised to get Caleb Swanigan to Purdue, doubling down on a very good team in hopes of coming up with a great one. As part of it, Purdue got bigger but made an already-less-than-dynamic roster athletically a bit slower by moving a bunch of people down a position classification to make room for a 1985-style power forward. There's no question Swanigan makes Purdue better, but that doesn't mean it had to be a smooth transition.
Purdue got bigger while everybody is playing smaller. Hell, I think Illinois' rash of injuries up front helped it tonight, because if the Illini are playing traditional posts instead of jump-shooting bigs and guards, who knows how this game plays out?
Like Illinois, which countered the Boilermakers' ultimate size with, basically, four guards and one big who could shooter jumpers over size. When those bigs weren't making jumpers, the threat of them doing so had one of the game's most influential shot-blockers floating 18 feet from the basket, powerless to do anything when Illinois smoked Purdue off the dribble and claimed the lane.
All told, Purdue's vulnerabilities on defense - the ones the numbers cloak - were laid bare.
But Purdue didn't lose tonight solely because Illinois played small and its bigs made a bunch of jump shots.
It lost because it had no answers for Hill and Nunn when it needed answers, not when Davis was guarding one but not the other.
(I'll go back and watch the game again but my instant recall - and I had a tough vantage point at State Farm Center - has me thinking Davis didn't give up but a fraction of those points Illinois' top two scorers totaled.)
It lost because most of its 16 turnovers were of dead-ball variety - including an egregious six offensive fouls - and Illinois still scored 24 points off them, suggesting that having its defense set didn't make all that big a different from past games that were turned by turnovers.
Purdue has to get this figured out. Matt Painter has to get this figured out, because the Boilermakers aren't going to score the way they scored on Michigan every night out.
Seventy points on the road should be enough in the Big Ten to not lose by more than a dozen.
I will repeat, though: It is Jan. 11. There are plenty of games to be played, plenty of improvement that can be made.
