Against the Catamounts today, Purdue pushed the ball inside to mountainous center Isaac Haas early.
The results: Dunk. Bucket. Sky hook (bucket).
There you go: There was the Purdue model this season, keep throwing it to the aircraft carriers inside and let them work.
Then, Purdue made 18 three-pointers, showing the ying to the interior game's yang.
Look, Purdue isn't going to beat anyone else this season, probably, by making 18 threes. You'd hope it won't have to, again, and I say that noting that the Boilermakers could have made half as many threes tonight and still won.
But that they might be able to will help them down the line.
I'm not going to say opponents didn't respect Purdue's shooting last season, but I will say that Purdue didn't give them a whole lot of reason to.
No one's going to burn couches over the Boilermakers beating North Carolina A&T and Vermont by making 30 threes, but the fact remains that this has shown early to be a team capable of barrages from the perimeter.
My belief is Purdue will be a better long-range shooting team, and not just because of its designated shooters, but because of the improvement of others, like Vince Edwards and Rapheal Davis.
But more important than Purdue being a great three-point shooting team is it never being a terrible one. Make sense?
I doubt this team ever goes 4-of-26, the dreaded number that, in effect, ended the Boilermakers' season last year.
This is a better shooting team and today's game served as notice to not forget about Dakota Mathias.
Not that anybody would, but Kendall Stephens gets viewed a certain way because a lot of people think, for good reason, he can be really good, and Ryan Cline is all new and exciting and stuff. It would be easy to overlook Mathias to some extent, him being a guy that does very little to draw attention to himself.
But he can shoot it, man.
He just didn't shoot nearly as well as he'd have liked last season because of the circumstances he faced.
Today, he had the biggest scoring night of his career, making 5-of-7 threes and looking like he had some of that edge he had in high school, when there was almost a modest cockiness - jumbo shrimp, I know - about him.
Led by Mathias, Purdue rained threes tonight against Vermont.
The flip side of it is that it had to.
Purdue just outscored the Catamounts, largely because of its vulnerabilities on defense at this early stage of the season, vulnerabilities that were very much exposed.
A.J. Hammons' presence matters - a lot - and the sense here is that his absence might have meant a 20-point swing in this game, but much more went into it than that.
Purdue is going to be a work in progress against ball-screen offenses, where its size can work against it and its lack of quickness on the perimeter can be rubbed raw. Caleb Swanigan - for as awesome a player as he projects to be - is going to have to adjust to some new and uncomfortable situations, but I'll say this: I've not seen many freshmen with the capability to self-correct and improve things on the fly than him.
Purdue's off to a good start, but has plenty to work on, and that's what this time of year is for, for exposing weaknesses and getting them fixed.
And things will be easier to fix now that preparation will be more extensive, due to data available on coming opponents.
The results: Dunk. Bucket. Sky hook (bucket).
There you go: There was the Purdue model this season, keep throwing it to the aircraft carriers inside and let them work.
Then, Purdue made 18 three-pointers, showing the ying to the interior game's yang.
Look, Purdue isn't going to beat anyone else this season, probably, by making 18 threes. You'd hope it won't have to, again, and I say that noting that the Boilermakers could have made half as many threes tonight and still won.
But that they might be able to will help them down the line.
I'm not going to say opponents didn't respect Purdue's shooting last season, but I will say that Purdue didn't give them a whole lot of reason to.
No one's going to burn couches over the Boilermakers beating North Carolina A&T and Vermont by making 30 threes, but the fact remains that this has shown early to be a team capable of barrages from the perimeter.
My belief is Purdue will be a better long-range shooting team, and not just because of its designated shooters, but because of the improvement of others, like Vince Edwards and Rapheal Davis.
But more important than Purdue being a great three-point shooting team is it never being a terrible one. Make sense?
I doubt this team ever goes 4-of-26, the dreaded number that, in effect, ended the Boilermakers' season last year.
This is a better shooting team and today's game served as notice to not forget about Dakota Mathias.
Not that anybody would, but Kendall Stephens gets viewed a certain way because a lot of people think, for good reason, he can be really good, and Ryan Cline is all new and exciting and stuff. It would be easy to overlook Mathias to some extent, him being a guy that does very little to draw attention to himself.
But he can shoot it, man.
He just didn't shoot nearly as well as he'd have liked last season because of the circumstances he faced.
Today, he had the biggest scoring night of his career, making 5-of-7 threes and looking like he had some of that edge he had in high school, when there was almost a modest cockiness - jumbo shrimp, I know - about him.
Led by Mathias, Purdue rained threes tonight against Vermont.
The flip side of it is that it had to.
Purdue just outscored the Catamounts, largely because of its vulnerabilities on defense at this early stage of the season, vulnerabilities that were very much exposed.
A.J. Hammons' presence matters - a lot - and the sense here is that his absence might have meant a 20-point swing in this game, but much more went into it than that.
Purdue is going to be a work in progress against ball-screen offenses, where its size can work against it and its lack of quickness on the perimeter can be rubbed raw. Caleb Swanigan - for as awesome a player as he projects to be - is going to have to adjust to some new and uncomfortable situations, but I'll say this: I've not seen many freshmen with the capability to self-correct and improve things on the fly than him.
Purdue's off to a good start, but has plenty to work on, and that's what this time of year is for, for exposing weaknesses and getting them fixed.
And things will be easier to fix now that preparation will be more extensive, due to data available on coming opponents.
