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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
So, as seasons end, the transfer portal is starting to fill up and while that's not Purdue's prime focus at the moment, it is something they need to multi-task with, because at the very least they need a guard for next season.
Purdue will recruit Princeton's Jaelin Llewellyn, who was headed their way out of high school before a strange turn of events sent him to the Ivy League. Our educated belief there was that Llewellyn didn't play great at an event that July in, well, Milwaukee and people around him started worrying about level of competition and rethinking the whole power-conference thing.
Obviously academics were a big deal in his decision, but the funny thing there was that he was looking at computer science, an area where Purdue takes a backseat to no one.
He averaged 15.7 per game this season and might have playing against Purdue tomorrow had his team not lost the Ivy's AQ bid to Yale.
I don't know if Llewellyn will be a priority for Purdue. There's something to be said for letting things play out and seeing what else ends up being available. But there's also something to be said for moving quick because these things move fast, one of the many cluster----s coaches have to deal with during this musical chairs era.
It's not a no-brainer that Purdue would really prioritize Llewellyn (and not a no-brainer he'd come just because he almost did after high school, which was a long time ago.)
Now, Nijel Pack, he'd be a no-brainer.
That's the one to watch.
Pack is not in the portal, and it remains mere assumption he'd go that route after Kansas State's coaching change. Even if he was going to, there's no hurry. He could always wait 'til K-State makes a hire before deciding what he'd do.
Purdue would target Pack, but so would everyone else, so there'd be no guarantees there, either.
Our assumption as of this moment is that Zach Edey will be back next season, so the need for a transfer big man may not be there.
Purdue has a lot of frontcourt options due to return next season. (BN)
PURDUE BASKETBALL
Purdue's Terry Johnson is definitely going to be a candidate for the Ball State job and probably has the inside track, based on everything we've been told.
Given that he's very much looking to be a head coach, he'll be interested. He has to be interested. While Ball State probably isn't as good a job as it should be, it's a hell of a first job, especially for someone whose roots run as deep in Indiana as Johnson's do.
We'll see what happens.
I know any time that a job might be coming open, people want to know who's next at Purdue.
That would be getting way ahead of things at this point, but we can tell you that P.J. Thompson is being groomed — and actually helped Johnson get on-boarded at Purdue — but probably not for this soon. (BN)
