Welcome to this week's "BOILING OVER," GoldandBlack.com's weekly Ultimate Ticket information-clearinghouse and analysis column meant for our subscribers and our subscribers only.
We appreciate everyone's cooperation in helping us keep what is sometimes delicate information confined to this message board.
We certainly don't want it to come to this, but if there are problems, subscriptions have and will be canceled over this.
We know there are a lot of blogs out there and a lot of you are on Twitter and other message boards, and we don't want to come off like Darth Vader here, but we would be doing all our subscribers a disservice if weren't proactive about protecting the value of their subscription. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
Additionally, we address recruiting in-depth and often without filter in this feature and we do it behind a subscription-protected barrier for a reason, in hopes of avoiding situations where our reporting can impact the recruiting process, which can happen occasionally. So again, we appreciate everyone's cooperation very much.
First off, please see our report yesterday on Caleb Swanigan and consider that an extension of this week's BO.
Swanigan's decision
We are not aware of anything changing in the past 24 hours aside from Swanigan reiterating via Twitter than he expects to announce on Saturday. Please consider the long, glorious history of teenagers tweeting one thing then doing another and take into account the much-detailed fluidity of this situation before breaking down into hysterics. Thanks.
As we told you a few hours ago, sources - because everything comes from somewhere, right? - indicate that an announcement on A.J. Hammons' plans might be imminent, jibing with his comment last night about this being a "faster" process this time around.
And sources, along with any number of hints, suggest that the most likely scenario has Hammons returning for his senior season, a big, big deal for Purdue and really the best decision, quite honestly, for the player.
This anticlimactic nature of this is going to deprive us of the opportunity to milk this for all its worth from an analytical standpoint, but hell, you come here to read lots of words, so we'll give you lots of words.
This is simply a matter of Hammons' draft stock, which right now isn't much different than it was a year ago, it doesn't seem like, and that's based on more intel than just Internet mock drafts and rankings.
Hammons doesn't even have his NBA draft report back yet unless it came in this morning and so maybe the reason this door hasn't been closed yet is just the remote possibility of a winning lottery ticket coming in from the draft committee.
As we broke down weeks ago in innovative "Mailbag" format (link), Hammons can really help himself by playing an entire season at the level he played the back half of his junior season at.
His age - he'll be nearly 24 come draft day next year - matters, but not more than being where he needs to be as a player, and he still has to show people he can play a full season. The NBA will draft the best players over the youngest players, though the youngest players might get the nod in a flip-a-coin situation.
Hammons and those around him seem to understand this, but more goes into than that.
We don't talk enough in these cases about quality of life.
Hammons is happy and comfortable and everyone likes to be happy and comfortable, but him maybe more than anyone else, because it's been a long road for him to get there. At this time a year ago, he might have been more comfortable than he was, but it was a really difficult season for him.
Purdue's personnel turnover, we think, helped and the freshmen absolutely helped. This team seemed to embrace him more than past teams and did and that mattered, on top of the simple facts that he probably grew up quite a bit this year and just liked the people around him more.
That's been our point these past few weeks: It would be harder for Hammons to leave this team than it would have been the last one.
As for comfort, it's not just a comfortable life at Purdue, but the prospect of a not-so-comfortable one at the next level. There is a good chance still - whether it's now or a year from now - that Hammons will have to be one of those players who has to scratch and claw his way into the NBA via all sorts of less-than-ideal places, cities and leagues, shuffling between them on stuffy buses for a fraction of an NBA check.
Life is often better as a major college basketball player than it is as a low-level professional.
By coming back, Hammons can enjoy that comfort for another year, hopefully for his sake get his degree, and do what he can to improve his standing to the point that maybe Europe and the D-league become far less likely first stops.
Hammons is an NBA talent. He's just not quite an NBA player yet.
We think you'll see here very soon that he recognizes just that.
Purdue is having its third and final junior day this weekend.
We don't have a great sense for who's coming but will hopefully after the weekend. We do know Decatur Central offensive lineman Trent Maynard is coming and that's a big one.
(We will be covering Sunday morning's Rivals Combine in Indy and will get an update from Maynard and possible early commitment Josh Hayes, among others, there.)
Couple other possible visitors tomorrow (and again, hopefully we'll have more Monday): Kentucky wide receiver Kendrick Davis, neither of them offered players at this point to our knowledge.
Purdue is hosting a significant visit today in highly recruited Ohio defensive tackle Jeffery Pooler. We'll have more on the former Toledo commitment tomorrow. (BN)
Reminder of what we reported last week or two weeks or whatever it was: Purdue has 2016 shooting guard Jarron Cumberland coming for an official visit next weekend. Purdue's the leader. Could he commit? Don't know. We wouldn't expect it, but we wouldn't rule it out there. (BN)
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. 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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https://purdue.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=892&CID=818514
We appreciate everyone's cooperation in helping us keep what is sometimes delicate information confined to this message board.
We certainly don't want it to come to this, but if there are problems, subscriptions have and will be canceled over this.
We know there are a lot of blogs out there and a lot of you are on Twitter and other message boards, and we don't want to come off like Darth Vader here, but we would be doing all our subscribers a disservice if weren't proactive about protecting the value of their subscription. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
Additionally, we address recruiting in-depth and often without filter in this feature and we do it behind a subscription-protected barrier for a reason, in hopes of avoiding situations where our reporting can impact the recruiting process, which can happen occasionally. So again, we appreciate everyone's cooperation very much.
Swanigan's decision
We are not aware of anything changing in the past 24 hours aside from Swanigan reiterating via Twitter than he expects to announce on Saturday. Please consider the long, glorious history of teenagers tweeting one thing then doing another and take into account the much-detailed fluidity of this situation before breaking down into hysterics. Thanks.
And sources, along with any number of hints, suggest that the most likely scenario has Hammons returning for his senior season, a big, big deal for Purdue and really the best decision, quite honestly, for the player.
This anticlimactic nature of this is going to deprive us of the opportunity to milk this for all its worth from an analytical standpoint, but hell, you come here to read lots of words, so we'll give you lots of words.
This is simply a matter of Hammons' draft stock, which right now isn't much different than it was a year ago, it doesn't seem like, and that's based on more intel than just Internet mock drafts and rankings.
Hammons doesn't even have his NBA draft report back yet unless it came in this morning and so maybe the reason this door hasn't been closed yet is just the remote possibility of a winning lottery ticket coming in from the draft committee.
As we broke down weeks ago in innovative "Mailbag" format (link), Hammons can really help himself by playing an entire season at the level he played the back half of his junior season at.
His age - he'll be nearly 24 come draft day next year - matters, but not more than being where he needs to be as a player, and he still has to show people he can play a full season. The NBA will draft the best players over the youngest players, though the youngest players might get the nod in a flip-a-coin situation.
Hammons and those around him seem to understand this, but more goes into than that.
We don't talk enough in these cases about quality of life.
Hammons is happy and comfortable and everyone likes to be happy and comfortable, but him maybe more than anyone else, because it's been a long road for him to get there. At this time a year ago, he might have been more comfortable than he was, but it was a really difficult season for him.
Purdue's personnel turnover, we think, helped and the freshmen absolutely helped. This team seemed to embrace him more than past teams and did and that mattered, on top of the simple facts that he probably grew up quite a bit this year and just liked the people around him more.
That's been our point these past few weeks: It would be harder for Hammons to leave this team than it would have been the last one.
As for comfort, it's not just a comfortable life at Purdue, but the prospect of a not-so-comfortable one at the next level. There is a good chance still - whether it's now or a year from now - that Hammons will have to be one of those players who has to scratch and claw his way into the NBA via all sorts of less-than-ideal places, cities and leagues, shuffling between them on stuffy buses for a fraction of an NBA check.
Life is often better as a major college basketball player than it is as a low-level professional.
By coming back, Hammons can enjoy that comfort for another year, hopefully for his sake get his degree, and do what he can to improve his standing to the point that maybe Europe and the D-league become far less likely first stops.
Hammons is an NBA talent. He's just not quite an NBA player yet.
We think you'll see here very soon that he recognizes just that.
We don't have a great sense for who's coming but will hopefully after the weekend. We do know Decatur Central offensive lineman Trent Maynard is coming and that's a big one.
(We will be covering Sunday morning's Rivals Combine in Indy and will get an update from Maynard and possible early commitment Josh Hayes, among others, there.)
Couple other possible visitors tomorrow (and again, hopefully we'll have more Monday): Kentucky wide receiver Kendrick Davis, neither of them offered players at this point to our knowledge.
Purdue is hosting a significant visit today in highly recruited Ohio defensive tackle Jeffery Pooler. We'll have more on the former Toledo commitment tomorrow. (BN)
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. 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.
https://purdue.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=892&CID=818514
