So despite the fact Ewing, Eastern, and Wheeler have yet to step on the floor in a game at Mackey Arena......
and you have never seen them play, you think they should "lead the way" over the seniors.........a class that has arguably done as much as any to turn around the program at Purdue.
Brilliant.
Yes. I am brilliant! I predicted Biggie would leave and never strayed from my decision, and provided about 20 reasons. I also predicted Purdue would lay an egg in the BIG 10 tourney, and that they would lose to Kansas.
I've also stated many times that I have not seen many of Purdue's recruits play in high school or watch many AAU games. But I place a lot more faith in the people who are paid to rate a recruit over the typical Purdue fan with 10,000 posts on a sports forum. I use those people who rate players as my eyes and ears.
It seems some of you are rather hypocritical about those people who rate players. You love their rankings if the player is targeted or signed by Purdue. I keep reading how great JJJ, Phinisee, Hunter, and Carmody are. And you like them primarily based on those ratings. But when they sign elsewhere, you seem to doubt those ratings and say they are not as good as their ratings. You love Haarms, but Epperson, not so much. And nobody likes Bowen, primarily because he doesn't like Purdue.
I'll have to ask, how many people on this board have actually seeen Ewing, Wheeler, Haarms or Eastern play an actual game? Or is opinion just formed by highlight reel films? To be honest, I've never seen a negative highlight reel film except for the one my son was in. And that film was Cliff Alexander's film. My son made Cliff look great.
So yes, if those people who get paid to rate players say a player is good/great, I tend to believe them more than people with blood on their face or fancy abrieviated nicknames that have Boiler as part of it. Nothing says homer more than a nickname including their favorite team's name.
And I also look at the players Painter targets and also plays. PJ was not Painter's first choice to be Purdue's point guard. His first three choices signed elsewhere. And many people including Painter were hoping C Edwards would start over PJ. Has anybody seen Taylor play extended periods of time? He was a high 3 star before an injury his senior year. Wheeler was on a national championship high school team. But he was the second best player on the team, but shined in the championship game when their opponent keyed on his teammate.
I could on and on regurgitating reports by people who do them for money. I've also watched many Purdue games. And I've watched our current players choke a lot of games away to lesser teams in the past 5 years. So rather than going with the most experienced players, I prefer to believe some of our recruits based on national analysis, are better options .
Kentucky has proven a team can win with freshmen starters. Other teams have proven freshmen are better starters than existing players. Swanigan beat out somebody to start as a freshman.
Eastern has a lot of accolades and was rated higher than Edwards. Should we show loyalty to Pj or go with the player with obviously more talent? Ewing was the best JuCo PF last year. Should we play Edwards at PF, or keep him at SF?
Some of you are hard to understand. You praise these incoming recruits as being great, but you still want to start seniors primarily based on experience and the fact we won a bunch of games last year and you don't want change.
So rather than playing an experienced team, I'd rather play our most talented team. And as basketball analysis goes, the basketball rankings have proven to be a lot more accurate over fan's beliefs.
And lastly, those four seniors didn't really turn around Purdue basketball. Last year's team was essentially as good as the Boilers were the three previous years. The lone difference is the ball went in the hoop rather than choking against Cincy and Arkansas st. We still had problems hitting FTs in the closing seconds. Last year's team almost lost to Vermont and ISU. How soon we forgot Vermont's best player became injured. If not for that injury, and we had lost to Vermont, would you still want these 4 seniors to start?
