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Welcome to this week's “BOILING OVER,” GoldandBlack.com’s weekly information-clearinghouse and analysis column meant for our site members and site members only. We appreciate everyone’s cooperation in helping us keep what is sometimes delicate or proprietary information confined to this message board. This feature allows us to be more flexible in our reporting, to our readers' benefit, and we lose that ability if we can't keep this feature secure and the value of our site's membership at its peak. Additionally, we address recruiting and hiring processes 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.
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PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING
As you know, Purdue's Class of 2022 focus now lies squarely on international big man William Berg, the only live offer on the board right now, best we can tell.
Here's where things stand: Berg needs to visit Purdue. He does not believe he can at the moment. Sweden remains under a Level 3 travel advisory from the U.S. State Department, and while there may be some workarounds there for essential travel or whatever — I don't know, and all that matters is how the family is proceeding anyway — their hope is to be able to make that visit later this fall, maybe around the start of November. We shall see.
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Our guess — our guess — is that given the considerable complexity of the trip, both in distance and probably hassle, this may not be a multiple-visit kind of deal, unless he can stack visits, where he'd fly to America, then jump to two or three schools one after the other.
Purdue is clearly Berg's best offer at this point. Since Purdue offered, only Utah State has followed suit, on top of the low-majors who'd offered first. Academically, Purdue's reputation is more global in reach than just about any school so much as looking at Berg. Only Stanford and Princeton would be in that same conversation. Purdue's campus is generally friendly to internationals, because there are so many different populations represented.
And of course basketball. If you're a giant, Purdue is sort of the place.
Berg says he's always "dreamed" of playing college basketball in America, and that ambition suggests he'd want to do so in a big conference, and on TV.
There's still a ways to go here, and a lot can happen in a month if he has to wait those several weeks to make that Purdue visit, but it sure seems like this one's setting up well for the Boilermakers. That visit would have to go pretty sideways, I'd have to think, for Berg to return to Sweden and hit the reset button on his recruitment.
The biggest part of this now is just him being able to visit. Purdue may be able to send coaches over there in the meantime to watch him work out with his club team and presumably meet with him, but it's a matter of getting him to West Lafayette that matters most.
Should Purdue land Berg, he'd come in a fairly similar position as Zach Edey last season, where it would appear on paper as if Purdue might be able to bring him along slowly, assuming Edey is back for his junior year and assuming Caleb Furst (or even Trey Kaufman-Renn) could occupy reserve minutes at the 5. But if he's ready to play right away, as Edey was last season, hey, great.
Should Berg not wind up at Purdue, we'd think the transfer portal would be the next recourse, and that could start effectively in December, should the portal start filling up mid-year. (BN)
PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING
Today was the first day of the fall evaluation period, the first such period since two falls ago.
Matt Painter spent his day in — of all places — Utah.
Commit Camden Heide just enrolled in prep school out there, and 2023 target Dravyn Gibbs-Lawhorn — who's coming back from injury — goes to school out there as well.
Locally, Purdue dedicated much of today to seeing 2024 and 2025 players, a number of them around Indy, but Paul Lusk is due in Illinois, too, today to see 2023 big man target Owen Freeman.
On the 2024 front, Brandon Brantley saw guard Durral Brooks in Grand Rapids and Terry Johnson saw K.J. Windham at Ben Davis. Windham in the younger brother of former Creighton signee Jalen Windham, who's now at Ball State.
A couple of 2025s names on the radar: Braylon Mullins, a guard from Greenfield Central; and Jalen Haralson, an athletic wing from Fishers.
PURDUE FOOTBALL RECRUITING
A quick 2024 recruiting note during this slow week: Purdue just had New Palestine's Luke Burgess on campus for an unofficial visit and apparently did offer him quite some time ago, as an offensive tackle.
It was actually the first-ever college game he attended, so that's notable.
Burgess holds a bunch of early offers, but will get more. He's visiting Ohio State and Notre Dame at different points this season, and Oregon's already come to Indianapolis to offer him, so he's become kind of a big deal.
Having seen him in-person twice now, we can tell you he's legit, a guy with unbelievable size for a raw tackle prospect. He's like 6-8 and his 270 pounds are carried like 250. He's mobile and well balanced. He'll be a big-time recruit, is my guess, and won't be easy to keep staying power with, but Purdue couldn't have gotten much more out of that first visit, getting a good win In a great environment.
Purdue had a bunch of good 2023s on campus for the Oregon State game, Including Cathedral's Kendrick Gilbert and Dublin (Ohio) Coffman's Will Smith, both of them defensive linemen. (BN)
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