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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
Next weekend will be an Important one for Purdue and Its 2024 recruiting efforts, as both Brownsburg wing Kanon Catchings and Georgia guard Gicarri Harris will be on campus for their junior year official visits, which will start Thursday, so they can be at the Penn State football game.
Committed junior Jack Benter will also officially visit, as will senior commitment Myles Colvin.
Purdue's done pretty well with these visits since their inception and it will want to this year, as Catchings and Harris are top priorities, and both seemingly get-able. It's safe to call Purdue No. 1 for Catchings and while there's a long way to go on Harris, the Boilermakers have clearly stood out to Harris while the SEC does whatever the SEC does before players are seniors.
Catchings will actually be at Purdue this weekend for elite camp, so the convergence of these two events would seem to afford Purdue an opportunity to get this one done early, maybe and set a nice foundation for this class, a group whose scholarship numbers will still be influenced by whether any current juniors return for their sixth years.
We think major programs are sleeping on Catchings, and Purdue's done a good job recruiting him and a really good job, too, recruiting his family, which philosophically aligns with Matt Painter's approach to things, if that makes sense.
Should Purdue land Catchings to go along with Benter, it would add to a really nice group of wings moving forward, with Colvin coming in, and Camden Heide in the program now.
The needs would then be a point guard, which Purdue would view Harris as even if he's more of a combo guard, and a post player. We'd think J.T. Rock would be brought in for a junior visit at some point also. Travis Perry and Raleigh Burgess should be on campus for visits in the next few weeks, as well.
(BN)
ELITE CAMP THIS WEEKEND
So, best we can tell, the headliner for this weekend's elite camp is Catchings, not only because he's one of the established targets participating, but because things could conceivably happen in the near term.
Benter will be back on campus and blue-chip 2025 center Malachi Moreno, who'll be a 2025 priority. Indianapolis 2025 Dezmon Briscoe will be another in-state headliner-type prospect at the event, as will Greenfield Central's Braylon Mullins.
EJ Walker from Ohio will be another top 2025 name, and there's supposed to be some other highly thought-of players from around the Midwest.
In the near term, though, Catchings is the headliner. (BN)
PURDUE FOOTBALL RECRUITING
Kendrick Gilbert should be announcing very soon, we'd think, as he told us on Friday night that his mind was made up and he was just waiting on his means of announcing to be finalized. Normally that means someone's making a video, but we think this might be related to a podcast he was going to do.
Our sense as of last weekend was Purdue, but need to hear it from him. And Kentucky's never to be taken lightly. Not sure anything ever final with Vince Marrow involved.
Our long-standing sense has been that the player wants to come to Purdue — and Purdue having other Cathedral guys on its team has been a plus — but the money at Kentucky is better. Purdue does have some NIL apparatus up and running, though, now, so the choice isn't what it might have been a few months ago, where it's a decision between lots of money and no money.
This has dragged on a bit, but in the grand scheme of things, not that much. (BN)
PURDUE BASKETBALL
Expect the Big Ten schedule to come out early to mid-next week.
