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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
Huge official visit weekend at Purdue, as we told you days ago, with 2024 targets Kanon Catchings and Gicarri Harris making their OVs along with 2023 and 2024 commits Myles Colvin and Jack Benter.
Catchings is gonna be interesting. We do get the sense Purdue is well out in front there in a recruitment people are missing the boat on, to the Boilermakers' benefit. The family is on board with Purdue, and we never got the sense this would be a particularly drawn-out process, even though Catchings has only now really emerged a higher-end prospect and could certainly play things out some more.
There's certainly no reason to rush, but also we'll see if Catchings and his circle have any reason to wait.
Should Purdue land Catchings this weekend or sometime in the near term, that would be Commitment No. 2 for a 2024 class for which right now there are four scholarships, but also a wide range of outcomes for how many there actually wind up being.
Should Purdue land a second commitment already prudence probably suggests that things get slowed down a bit, but there are going to be needs that they keep attacking no matter what, and one of them is guard/point guard.
Harris is sort of more of a combo guard, but he'd check that point guard box, especially defensively, and will remain a target no matter what.
There's no reason whatsoever that we know of to expect him to decide any time soon, but we do think Purdue has stood out to him early, In part because Purdue has actually recruited him hard and built a relationship with him, which the SEC apparently doesn't seem to bother to do. Gelen Robinson has really helped Purdue, and maybe he'll be around for the visit this weekend. Don't know.
Harris is a very good shooter and a big, physical sort of presence in the backcourt. He could be a big-time intangibles guy for Purdue, too, because he's very competitive and takes defense very seriously. Our comp on him might be a Keaton Grant type (after he became a good shooter, though Harris is a more natural shooter).
PURDUE FOOTBALL RECRUITING
Despite this being a Thursday night right at the front end of the high school football season, Purdue ought to have some key recruits in Ross-Ade Stadium for tonight's Penn State game.
Noblesville offensive tackle Ransom McDermott is due to attend the game, as well. He holds an early Purdue offer. So will Speedway's (the town, not the gas station) Damola Ajani.
Elite Fort Wayne area wide receivers Breaunte Johnson and Mylan Graham each are maybes. Obviously Purdue would love to have them.
Commits who'll be attending: Kendrick Gilbert, Owen Davis, Jaron Tibbs, Saadiq Clements (definitely not Bey) and TJ McWilliams.
Possible too that 2024 quarterback target Danny O'Neil shows up. (BN)
PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING
Next weekend, Purdue hosts point guard target Travis Perry for an official visit and big man target Raleigh Burgess for what's slated to be an unofficial visit.
Both have Purdue offers and stand as priorities for the Boilermakers in their positional categories.
Perry has seemed to really like Purdue, but that Kentucky offer that came in June could reasonably have been viewed as a Death Star over this recruitment. But the longer things go — and keep In mind, he's a junior, so "long" Is relative — the more it's possible that UK offer was more cosmetic or more a placeholder than anything else. Kentucky wasn't exactly all over him in July during the evaluation periods, best we could tell.
Burgess has a bunch to sort through, so we'd consider this extremely early for him. Hard to handicap that one right now, but he and JT Rock are the two bigs In that class that we know of as priorities at this early juncture. Have to figure Rock makes an official at some point as well.
Keep in mind, also, that if things go well this weekend and Purdue manages to get Catchings committed and gets a good vibe from Harris or whatever, you're sitting with two commitments already without knowing for sure how many scholarships you'll even have. Might then be time to pump the brakes a bit and let things play out some more. (BN)
PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING
On top of the four official visits starting Thursday night — well, in addition to, not on top of — Purdue is expected to have top-10 2024 prospect Flory Bidunga on campus for the football game after it had a Zoom meeting with him not long ago.
Look, the presumed dynamics here are well known and have been well publicized and we'd love to not have to rehash them every time we mention this recruit, but either this Is an open recruitment or at least will have the look of an open recruitment. Purdue's stance has always been that if there's an opportunity to recruit the big man, it wants in. Obviously there's at least been some opportunities for dialogue and now maybe a visit. If he plans to visit Purdue, then that suggests he'd make other visits as well.
We've gotten numerous indications of how much those around Bidunga like and respect Painter. And a plus for Purdue if all things are equal would be that Bidunga's adopted hometown of Kokomo has embraced him and there could be some Interest In remaining near-by where those folks could be part of things.
All this being said, we'd urge all of you to not get your hopes up here. By mentioning pluses here, we're just kind of talking things through. (BN)
PURDUE BASKETBALL
• The Big Ten schedule was supposed to be out earlier this week. Guess what? It wasn't.
• As I told you in my column yesterday, Jaden Ivey will be at the Penn State football game tonight.
PURDUE WHEELING AND DEALING
Alan will have a report later from the Boilermaker Alliance's Drew Brees-related announcement, but we can tell you in advance that our understanding is that Brees' commitment here in all forms is considerable and a big, big deal for the Boilermaker Alliance and Purdue. (staff)
PURDUE RECRUITING
Stay tuned tomorrow night for bleary-eyed coverage from Carmel's meeting with Detroit Cass Tech. Purdue commits Winston Berglund and Will Heldt in action against the Detroit powerhouse that produced Jalen Graham, among many others.
