There's plenty of time to dissect the Purdue season that just ended, which we'll do in the days to come.
For now, we'll just examine how it ended, the Boilermakers' strange CBI loss to Santa Clara, or, we should say, Ronnie and Terone Johnson's loss to Kevin Foster.
It was a fitting ending to a season that triggered most Purdue loyalist's gag reflex. Sixteen wins is OK at a lot of places, a success at many, but it's not what Purdue is used to, not after one of the greatest runs of continued success in school history.
Many of the reasons Purdue's season ended the way it did were brought to the forefront Monday night in front of a couple thousand of the Boilermakers' closest friends in Mackey Arena.
First off, it should simply be noted that Purdue lost because of Kevin Foster and that is all. The Boilermakers didn't play a great game by any stretch of the imagination, but chances are that if Foster doesn't change out of his Clark Kent clothes at halftime, the Boilermakers are still playing.
In a word, he was unbelievable, and it makes you wonder how in the world you never, ever hear about players like him until they show up on somebody's campus in some irrelevant tournament.
Foster ended Purdue's season, plain and simple.
But as has been the case all season, there was a fair amount of Boilermaker-on-Boilermaker crime as well.
Perhaps you've heard that Purdue is not a good shooting team. It has its moments, but can never count on them.
Monday, the Boilermakers simply couldn't make open jumpers, contested jumpers or any jumpers, their offense zoned into paralysis again. When D.J. Byrd went 0-for-3 in the first half, you wondered if he had another one of those second-half bursts in him. He did not.
Is this an overnight fix? Hard to imagine so, but suffice to say that this is a crucial offseason both on the recruiting and skill-development fronts.
I digress again.
Next there was the ups and downs of A.J. Hammons, the substantially talented freshman big man who's weaved all season between dominant and dormant. Monday was a valley, though Sandi Marcius and Travis Carroll combined to produce enough productivity offensively to make up for it somewhat.
Purdue opened the season intent to feed the post. Monday night at times, it looked like it had never done so before. That's odd, another illustration of the consistency bug that's bit this team over and over since November.
The Boilermakers lost, too, to Santa Clara because of another underwhelming performance coming out of the second-half chute. Every team's different. But remember those old Purdue teams from earlier in the Matt Painter Era who you could set your watch to in their ability to make game-changing early second-half runs? You always knew it was coming.
How has it changed so dramatically? Probably the same way so many other things seem to have. This team completely shed the collective personality of the teams that came before it, seemed like, and that was reflected Monday night against a legitimately good Santa Clara team with legitimately good players, a couple of them who could be playing at a lot of other places beside Santa Clara. We said before the game that experience and shooting are a dangerous mix. That mix did Purdue in.
It's the same old story: Experience.
Santa Clara is loaded with seniors and starts four thousand-point scorers. Purdue is still being buoyed by freshmen.
Typically, experience trumps inexperience the way rock beats scissors.
That is, unless the inexperienced team is much better. Purdue isn't better than Santa Clara, let alone much better. That is a credit to Santa Clara, but also a slight indictment of Purdue. I don't want to marginalize Santa Clara here just because you've never heard of any of their players.
Next year, Purdue will be better, significantly better, provided some very basic things change during the offseason, things that wouldn't seem like easy fixes, but basic things nonetheless, like energy and work ethic. And jump-shooting.
The fact that Purdue did go down scratching and clawing was encouraging in that sense.
Matt Painter seemed to credit his team's late run to the officials' generosity - you can't get fined for that, can you? - but be that as it may, Purdue could have been ready for this season to just be done. Down 10 with two minutes to go, it could have just managed the score and gone home. Some of these guys didn't even want to play in this tournament, yet there was Purdue, getting two cracks at game-tying jumpers in the final 10 seconds. Jumpers of course, they had to be jumpers.
But try as they might, the Boilermakers couldn't get over that hump, such a recurring theme in so many contexts in the 33 games played as part of the 2012-13 season.
Purdue played in the CBI in hopes of it being a launching pad for next year's team. The reality now is that it was a wash. How much good could playing just two games have done?
That said, the decision to play was the right one.
But Purdue will hope to never have to make that decision again any time soon.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2013. 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.
For now, we'll just examine how it ended, the Boilermakers' strange CBI loss to Santa Clara, or, we should say, Ronnie and Terone Johnson's loss to Kevin Foster.
It was a fitting ending to a season that triggered most Purdue loyalist's gag reflex. Sixteen wins is OK at a lot of places, a success at many, but it's not what Purdue is used to, not after one of the greatest runs of continued success in school history.
Many of the reasons Purdue's season ended the way it did were brought to the forefront Monday night in front of a couple thousand of the Boilermakers' closest friends in Mackey Arena.
First off, it should simply be noted that Purdue lost because of Kevin Foster and that is all. The Boilermakers didn't play a great game by any stretch of the imagination, but chances are that if Foster doesn't change out of his Clark Kent clothes at halftime, the Boilermakers are still playing.
In a word, he was unbelievable, and it makes you wonder how in the world you never, ever hear about players like him until they show up on somebody's campus in some irrelevant tournament.
Foster ended Purdue's season, plain and simple.
But as has been the case all season, there was a fair amount of Boilermaker-on-Boilermaker crime as well.
Perhaps you've heard that Purdue is not a good shooting team. It has its moments, but can never count on them.
Monday, the Boilermakers simply couldn't make open jumpers, contested jumpers or any jumpers, their offense zoned into paralysis again. When D.J. Byrd went 0-for-3 in the first half, you wondered if he had another one of those second-half bursts in him. He did not.
Is this an overnight fix? Hard to imagine so, but suffice to say that this is a crucial offseason both on the recruiting and skill-development fronts.
I digress again.
Next there was the ups and downs of A.J. Hammons, the substantially talented freshman big man who's weaved all season between dominant and dormant. Monday was a valley, though Sandi Marcius and Travis Carroll combined to produce enough productivity offensively to make up for it somewhat.
Purdue opened the season intent to feed the post. Monday night at times, it looked like it had never done so before. That's odd, another illustration of the consistency bug that's bit this team over and over since November.
The Boilermakers lost, too, to Santa Clara because of another underwhelming performance coming out of the second-half chute. Every team's different. But remember those old Purdue teams from earlier in the Matt Painter Era who you could set your watch to in their ability to make game-changing early second-half runs? You always knew it was coming.
How has it changed so dramatically? Probably the same way so many other things seem to have. This team completely shed the collective personality of the teams that came before it, seemed like, and that was reflected Monday night against a legitimately good Santa Clara team with legitimately good players, a couple of them who could be playing at a lot of other places beside Santa Clara. We said before the game that experience and shooting are a dangerous mix. That mix did Purdue in.
It's the same old story: Experience.
Santa Clara is loaded with seniors and starts four thousand-point scorers. Purdue is still being buoyed by freshmen.
Typically, experience trumps inexperience the way rock beats scissors.
That is, unless the inexperienced team is much better. Purdue isn't better than Santa Clara, let alone much better. That is a credit to Santa Clara, but also a slight indictment of Purdue. I don't want to marginalize Santa Clara here just because you've never heard of any of their players.
Next year, Purdue will be better, significantly better, provided some very basic things change during the offseason, things that wouldn't seem like easy fixes, but basic things nonetheless, like energy and work ethic. And jump-shooting.
The fact that Purdue did go down scratching and clawing was encouraging in that sense.
Matt Painter seemed to credit his team's late run to the officials' generosity - you can't get fined for that, can you? - but be that as it may, Purdue could have been ready for this season to just be done. Down 10 with two minutes to go, it could have just managed the score and gone home. Some of these guys didn't even want to play in this tournament, yet there was Purdue, getting two cracks at game-tying jumpers in the final 10 seconds. Jumpers of course, they had to be jumpers.
But try as they might, the Boilermakers couldn't get over that hump, such a recurring theme in so many contexts in the 33 games played as part of the 2012-13 season.
Purdue played in the CBI in hopes of it being a launching pad for next year's team. The reality now is that it was a wash. How much good could playing just two games have done?
That said, the decision to play was the right one.
But Purdue will hope to never have to make that decision again any time soon.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2013. 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.
