I really thought this was the year guys/gals….

[COBoiler1]

"Painter hater waaaaah!". LOL

How old are you?

 

[boiler-deuce]

How old are you?

How old are you?

 

[BCfanatic2020]

More Iowa Fans wanna move on from ferentz than you probably think

 

[Purdue Grad in Texas]

More Iowa Fans wanna move on from ferentz than you probably think

That's been for several years running now.

 

[arsmitty]

The million dollar question is: If not this year, then when do we see a FF or NC? This was the best collection of talent in a very very long time. However, they either didn't listen or Painter tolerated the nonsense. Either way, it falls on the coach. You either recruit the right player, coach, develop or tolerate and be a spectator with a great seat. We saw what we have last night.

This IS the million $$ question. The more I've been working through the loss, the more I'm beginning to realize how much this bracket didn't "break" for Purdue as much as we all thought. Hear me out...

It would seem that both Texas and St. Peters were "bad" draws. Now, who knows, Kentucky may have been able to Purdue by 15+. I have no idea. With both Texas and St. Peter's ability to play that intense perimeter defense, all it took was a one bad night from Ivey and we were done. And that's what happened. No other perimeter scorer had really stepped up all year. Not in a way that would give you some confidence that if Ivey had a bad game, this other scorer could pick up the slack.

This was confirmed for me prior to the St. Peters game when R. Hummel was asked by Alan Karpick about, in his opinion, the Boiler's chances in the Sweet 16 and beyond. I'm paraphrasing but he basically said "They gotta get Sasha going and they gotta do that NOW." Looking back that was the elephant in the room that everyone knew about. I'm not blaming Sasha specifically, just making the point that w/o another perimeter option to handle some of the scoring load, this team was not in good shape for a deep run and we now see that.

I think this realization is tough because I think everyone believed that Newman and EHJ would be more scoring threats by this point in their respective careers. Sasha was never going to be able to create his own shot, not in the way that is needed in March, but the lack of offensive prowess from EHJ is tough to swallow. I'm not sure why he never developed that during his college career. So many other threads about Newman, no need to deep dive that one any longer.

I say all this to say, I don't think this was as fabulous of a team as we all wanted to believe. Tons of talent? Yes. NBA level guard? Yes. I think they were appropriately seeded as a #3 and I don't think this was THE YEAR. I also started to get concerned when the other B10 teams were getting picked off, 1-by-1, in the round of 32. I know that's not a perfect way to evaluate a conference but I think it's safe to say that the B10 wasn't the gauntlet of tough teams that maybe we (or at least me) thought it was.

I'm excited about the '22 class but I'm VERY excited about the '23 class. I'm hoping that DGL and Colvin are the types of scorers that can give us that juice in the postseason to make a legit tourney run. We shall see.