Deepest Purdue team in my lifetime?
- Thread starter purduedavie
- Start date
WOn't talk minutes as Painter sees different from what I always see, but yes, agreed this has to be one of, if not the deepest team Purdue has ever had. After I saw the scrimmage I felt that way more.
Here's the thing about a 'deep' team. Are they deep with good players or deep with players who are all about the same, meaning, you don't have a lot of drop off when you go to the bench because you don't have great talent to begin with.
It's all relative. If you have 8-10 guys who could all start on any given night, I'd argue that either A) you have the most talented team in the country or B) you have average talent without much superior talent who are difference-makers.
Take Morton: the guy has a ton of experience, but he's not that talented and is a bench player on probably every B10 team, yet Painter gives him starter minutes.
I’d say we’d be in between your options but closer to option 2 with a NPOTY. But by saying we are deep I am not including Morton in there, as I agree with your assessment of his play.
And deep only to the extent Cmp is gonna use that depth. Sure could have seen more of Jenkins our last game with smith struggling….
Well DJJ played 26 mins in that game…but Braden was gassed from late January on. We def should have played DJJ more during the season to get in a shooting rhythm and taken mins away from Braden. CMP unfortunately didn’t do himself any favors with not having many options the PG position. Hope he learns from it and mixes up lineups depending on who the opponent is (if needed).
Djj was not a pg....him playing point against fdu would've been a disaster....
People said the same thing last year, but by the end of year we had no answers at the two or three. Painter tried different combinations and nothing worked. We had a lot of guys but not a lot of depth. To be better this year, Jones needs to be as good or better than Jenkins and Colvin/Heide need to be better than Newman/Morton. I have high hopes, but I don't think "improved play" from guys like Morton/Waddell is going to be the difference.
Correct. There's a difference between being deep and being talented. Having a warm body you can throw out there doesn't mean a team is both deep and talented.
I just hope Painter gives Colvin and Heide a really long rope and lets them work through their mistakes and adjustment period to playing at this level. But, if Painter goes with the "safe" picks, then we'll have the same issues as late last year.
You do realize he backed up Braden right? Wouldn’t have been worse than Braden who had like a million turnovers that game and cmp refused to make a switch.
I get the concerns about Morton being a known quantity and I do think his role will be smaller, but if he can shoot more consistently it will help.
Waddell is a different story. Last season he was coming off of an ACL tear and I don’t really think we know what he is capable of. I watched the first half of the game on Wednesday and he looks like a player who can make a big difference to me.
In terms of overall depth, this is a different team than last season. I think that there is a nice influx of talent with Heide, Colvin, and Jones, but the extra year of experience with the returning players is also very significant. I now think that TKR is ready to step up and seize the starting job at the 4. What I see in him is that he is very talented and good enough to be a primary scorer, but also very capable of playing off of Zach very effectively. I see Gillis and Furst providing high quality depth in the front court. I also expect that we’ll see a significant improvement in Smith and Loyer, as they transition from true freshmen to sophomores.
I don’t know if this will prove to be the deepest team that Painter has had, but I like its chances.
I think the hope that Morton will improve his shooting is a false hope. His shot looks the same as it did 3 years ago and is just mechanically, unpleasing. He's got to be a bench role player who comes in for short spurts to slow down a hot scorer. Giving him starter minutes hurts the team offensively. Interested to see what Waddell can do against better athletes than whats he's seeing in Europe.
I still like Furst at the 4. He runs the floor better than TKR and can (or at least he used to) score in transition.
TKR is too talented to only see bench minutes and that’s why I’d hope to see him at the 4 and then slide to 5 when edey sits for some rest and have Furst come in at the 4. Furst has big potential, but he needs to start being more aggressive and show confidence. Kid can play, just needs to show it.
I think all of us are wanting to see Waddell, Heide and Colvin against better competition. We are all very encouraged by what we see so far because they’re all showing they can offer something better in an area we were lacking last year.
I 100% agree on Morton. Probably a great kid, but if we want to win and play with the best, he just doesn’t seem to be able to elevate his level of play to help get us there. I don’t think his shot will improve where he’s not a liability on offense, I hope I am completely wrong. But he kinda is what he is at this point. His defense wasn’t that good either to outweigh his non existent offense. not sure how this hamstring injury impacts playing time for him, but we all know CMP loves him some Morty…so we will see.
True braden had some turnovers but if the rest of our team, not edey, could catch and shoot, Smith would've had 15 assists....Jenkins was not winning that game for us....he was too slow against them and wasn't hitting his shots like he did in the big ten tournament....
"guys like Morton/Waddell" what does that mean? You have seen nothing of Waddell in real games.
And you are wrong.
