Now, stuff gets real.
After thrashing Incarnate Word Wednesday night without even playing particularly well, No. 21 Purdue takes its predictable 3-0 record into a portion of the schedule where it's conceivable it could lose.
That was just the reality of these first three regular season games - North Carolina A&T, Vermont and now Incarnate Word were at such steep disadvantages that they simply had no chance, and so the Boilermakers could play suspect defense and turn the ball over 22 times tonight and still win by a hundred. As soon as Isaac Haas set foot on the floor tonight, Incarnate Word was cooked.
Those days are over.
Old Dominion is a good team, not a top-25 team or anything like that, but a good, solid team nonetheless. If they want to make the NCAA Tournament without having to win their conference, Saturday might be a must for the Monarchs.
Florida, one of two potential Sunday opponents, is a name brand with talent. St. Joseph's is a historically solid, well-coached team with a hilarious mascot, so there's that.
Point is, now we start to find out a little more about just how good this Purdue team is and how good, more importantly, it can be.
Among those things:
Speaking generally of better competition and not necessarily these teams in Connecticut, do Purdue's big men play better against more traditional matchups than they might against overmatched non-conference opponents throwing junk defenses against them?
As level of competition steps up, basketball changes. It really does.
Purdue's point guards - the team's biggest personnel question coming into the season - have been solid so far. How will they fare in more pressurized situations, whether it be against better, more aggressive defenders or simply in closer games where possessions matter more and the margin for error is so much smaller. How will they fare defensively, quite possibly the most important part of their job overall?
Vince Edwards is better, way better. But how much better is he/can he be when he may have to exert himself against a good team? The Vince Edwards we've seen through three games looks like a future NBA draft pick. Does it translate against peer-level programs as game conditions change and Purdue needs him to play like a future NBA draft pick?
Does the shooting endure? There's 120 minutes of basketball in the books and Purdue's shooting 44.3 percent from long range and averaging one triple about every three minutes of game action. Soon, opponents are going to start playing the Boilermakers more straight-up schematically, and with better players come faster closeouts, long arms and maybe fewer long offensive rebounds.
Right now, Purdue looks like a true pick-your-poison type of team, but are we sure about that this early on? No reason to think the bottom is going to drop out and I don't think this team has the same potential to turn into a pumpkin every now and then like last year's team did. But still, we'll see how they are against more balanced defenses somewhere other than Mackey Arena.
The defense has to get better. Maybe playing higher-level teams with more traditional lineups will actually help, as counterintuitive as that sounds. Lower-level competition plays the game smaller out of necessity. That can be problematic for a team that starts glaciers in its frontcourt.
(As in big, not slow.)
How does Caleb Swanigan respond to the first game of his college career in which he looked like a freshman? He turned it over six times tonight. A "bad game" for Swanigan right now is 10 points and five boards in a one-sided win. Take that as a compliment, kid.
(Swanigan will be fine, but they pay me by the bullet point.)
Will Purdue's passing improve? The assist numbers are great and all but the look test shows a team that still looks a little bit clunky passing the ball around, whether it's not throwing catchable passes, passing to guys in bad positions (like a couple of the passes to Swanigan barreling down the lane tonignt), throwing it at peoples' knees or whatever. This is an unselfish team with good individual passers, but the chemistry and choreography seems like they're still in the refinement stage.
Fouls. As games get more evenly matched, officiating gets more magnified. Johnny Hill has had foul issues and you saw A.J. Hammons pick up a couple bump fouls in ball-screen defense tonight, the sort of annoyances that have ravaged past non-conference seasons for him.
The game is going to get called differently and it might not be pretty. The rules keep changing to, in effect, screw Purdue and those who play like it. How will it adjust? More importantly, how will it react when things don't go its way.
Matt Painter can't wait to see his team put in uncomfortable positions, I can promise you.
Newsflash: It's Nov. 19.
Every team in college basketball has questions remaining and Purdue - as good as it may be - is very much among them.
As the level of play increases in a season where Purdue can truly say it's playing for seeding right now, questions come to the forefront and they either get answered quickly or they don't.
The guess here is Purdue's going to be just fine in Connecticut. This is a good team, but now comes proving-ground time.
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Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited.
After thrashing Incarnate Word Wednesday night without even playing particularly well, No. 21 Purdue takes its predictable 3-0 record into a portion of the schedule where it's conceivable it could lose.
That was just the reality of these first three regular season games - North Carolina A&T, Vermont and now Incarnate Word were at such steep disadvantages that they simply had no chance, and so the Boilermakers could play suspect defense and turn the ball over 22 times tonight and still win by a hundred. As soon as Isaac Haas set foot on the floor tonight, Incarnate Word was cooked.
Those days are over.
Old Dominion is a good team, not a top-25 team or anything like that, but a good, solid team nonetheless. If they want to make the NCAA Tournament without having to win their conference, Saturday might be a must for the Monarchs.
Florida, one of two potential Sunday opponents, is a name brand with talent. St. Joseph's is a historically solid, well-coached team with a hilarious mascot, so there's that.
Point is, now we start to find out a little more about just how good this Purdue team is and how good, more importantly, it can be.
Among those things:
As level of competition steps up, basketball changes. It really does.
Right now, Purdue looks like a true pick-your-poison type of team, but are we sure about that this early on? No reason to think the bottom is going to drop out and I don't think this team has the same potential to turn into a pumpkin every now and then like last year's team did. But still, we'll see how they are against more balanced defenses somewhere other than Mackey Arena.
(As in big, not slow.)
(Swanigan will be fine, but they pay me by the bullet point.)
The game is going to get called differently and it might not be pretty. The rules keep changing to, in effect, screw Purdue and those who play like it. How will it adjust? More importantly, how will it react when things don't go its way.
Matt Painter can't wait to see his team put in uncomfortable positions, I can promise you.
Newsflash: It's Nov. 19.
Every team in college basketball has questions remaining and Purdue - as good as it may be - is very much among them.
As the level of play increases in a season where Purdue can truly say it's playing for seeding right now, questions come to the forefront and they either get answered quickly or they don't.
The guess here is Purdue's going to be just fine in Connecticut. This is a good team, but now comes proving-ground time.
-------------------------
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited.
