Some thoughts on Purdue's win over Estonia to finish pool play clean …
• If you watched the stream — it worked! — you saw Purdue play some pretty sketchy defense in the second quarter and draw its coach's hire, delivered with the international language of pissed-off basketball coach.
Good.
This has probably been too easy for Purdue so far. These pools wins won't be reality moving forward. It's probably a good thing for them to face a situation where their coach had to flip his lid and inform them that this is, in fact, not "clown time."
Purdue has to be better defensively when the games are more competitive and has to keep its turnovers reasonable. If you can take some teaching moments out of blowouts, that's probably a pretty positive thing.
• More of the same: Vincent Edwards has been really, really good, as Purdue needs him to be, Jacquil Taylor, in context, has been tremendous. He got 14 rebounds and is reaping the benefits of excellent effort. Not sure anybody's been better in their role than Taylor has. (Grady Eifert, too.)
You have to figure that at some point, one of these opponents actually defends and makes things harder on Purdue than they've been, but it's the shooting that is separating Team USA from the field. Dakota Mathias and Ryan Cline seemed to be the difference early and in these post-game interviews we've been there's definitely been a vibe of them finding polite ways to say they're getting whatever shots they want.
• A benefit of Nojel Eastern's size at point guard: He's going to be hard to pass around in ball-screen action. He covers so much ground and takes away so much field of vision in those situations, that's going to create some turnovers he'll probably not wind up getting credit for.
• If you watched the stream — it worked! — you saw Purdue play some pretty sketchy defense in the second quarter and draw its coach's hire, delivered with the international language of pissed-off basketball coach.
Good.
This has probably been too easy for Purdue so far. These pools wins won't be reality moving forward. It's probably a good thing for them to face a situation where their coach had to flip his lid and inform them that this is, in fact, not "clown time."
Purdue has to be better defensively when the games are more competitive and has to keep its turnovers reasonable. If you can take some teaching moments out of blowouts, that's probably a pretty positive thing.
• More of the same: Vincent Edwards has been really, really good, as Purdue needs him to be, Jacquil Taylor, in context, has been tremendous. He got 14 rebounds and is reaping the benefits of excellent effort. Not sure anybody's been better in their role than Taylor has. (Grady Eifert, too.)
You have to figure that at some point, one of these opponents actually defends and makes things harder on Purdue than they've been, but it's the shooting that is separating Team USA from the field. Dakota Mathias and Ryan Cline seemed to be the difference early and in these post-game interviews we've been there's definitely been a vibe of them finding polite ways to say they're getting whatever shots they want.
• A benefit of Nojel Eastern's size at point guard: He's going to be hard to pass around in ball-screen action. He covers so much ground and takes away so much field of vision in those situations, that's going to create some turnovers he'll probably not wind up getting credit for.
