They are way better than the end of last season. Smith is somewhat better than last season at this time Loyer is about the same, maybe a bit worse. Hopefully they are stronger at season end vs last year. Jones, Morton, Heide and Colvin can help with that.
Lying in the weeds
- Thread starter northside100
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That’s my point. Right now they are. They were really good one year ago also. Hopefully we don’t play them 30 minutes a game x 20 B1G indoor rugby games.
Yes, they were really, really good through January. From 2/4 on they were wildly inconsistent.
Yep. Turnovers and loss of confidence in shooting. We don't know what caused it. Hopefully Painter figured it out. He has definitely made turnovers a point of emphasis this year.
It just is very common for people to see something or hear something that hits home for some reason and to believe what they see or hear is the culprit...and many times the unseen variable is the reason. None of us have the time to know all we should to have informed opinions in all areas of life and so we wing it the best we can.We need more statistical modeling conversations on this board.
Just today I saw a mechanic I use for some things that I coached and he asked if I had seen Flory play. I told him yes and he said he wasn't ready ...he was too skinny. Now I personally believe Flory will be fine, but he has a different opinion as well. I think he is wrong and I know he thinks he is right...and he is no dummy, but for some reason he has a vision of what he sees and believes he is correct and I disagree. It is just what happens, but if I get stumped on a car, he is sharp, as was his father before him
I spend time here because I like many of the posters comments and believe that generally this forum is a cut above, but I'm sure others would see the same comments and believe differently. Linkage is not causal by default. It is the start of a hypothetical inquiry where more specific understanding of variables could be sought.
Now, relative to basketball early in the season I said I hope Lance is a good FT shooter since he will be needed at the end of games as a ball handler. I do not know what percentage he is shooting in more pressure moments (quantify that?) or his total FT percentage, but when Arizona was making their run and he went to the FT line fouled in the act of shooting and missed both FTs and having hit one out of two in recent games a couple of times...it is a concern that I hope is never in play because he needs to play
Yes. I was specifically referencing 2021-22 when Ivey was a sophomore in addition to last year. The two seasons followed a similar pattern (which was different than the pattern of Purdue teams in the past).
That said, the 2021-22 team felt like it should be a national title contender with Ivey and Trevion leading the way, but never figured out how to play defense. Last year’s team seemed like a complete overachiever from day one with the unheralded freshman backcourt.
My view is this year’s (2023-2024) is a new and different team and I don’t see them slipping as the season goes on. Regardless, my confidence going into the NCAA Tournament will be directly related to whether they can maintain an elite level of play throughout the Big Ten season.
Smith is way better than he was at any time last season. He had a few stand-out games last year, such as Marquette, but this year he has a stand-out game almost every game. He’s playing like an elite point guard right now, completely on a different level than a year ago at this time.
Loyer is clearly better than he was at this time, as well. Last year at this very time, his shooting struggles had already become apparent, having hit 4 out of 23 from 3 in the prior 3 games. This year, he is hitting close to 40% from 3 and has a better all around game. The Arizona game is the best that he has ever looked, with Tennessee being the only game that comes close. Consistency has been an issue, but I would take sophomore Loyer over freshman Loyer, hands down.
IMO, this take is way off.
Smith who was a mid pack, but competent guard last year, is working his way into the discussion for one of the All B10 teams @ years end. So I would change "somewhat" to MUCH.
Loyer has been dominant in all our big-time games, save Gonzaga. And our record would include several losses without him. While he has had 3 no show games, I don't see justification for saying he is worse than last year??
Could not agree more, I feel exactly the same way. Trevion and Jaden locked discipline and maturity and last year’s team had red flags from the onset with a heavy reliance on a true freshman back court and the lack of a true back up point guard.
I don’t see those same issues with this year‘s team but we really won’t know for sure for at least a couple of months
It is safe to say that both are no longer freshmen and a year in the system for each has allowed growth physically and mentally. We will probably see similar things out of Myles, but hope Cam gets more offensive as the season progresses because he is playing due to D at this time and who would have thought THAT would be the reason he would play?
While Trevion perhaps lacked maturity, I have no knowledge either way.
But he did have the discipline to lose HS weight and get in basketball shape. As a guy that has done that once or twice in my life, I know that takes remarkable discipline.
But I understand your sentiment above regarding a talented Jaden. His last game was evidence of that.
Hopefully, our current team has no issues. They seem to have an edge and competitiveness at guard.
There are dozen's of MP interviews that refute your point. To be clear, I'm talking about discipline on the court, i.e. playing to his strengths, making the simple play, playing within team defense concepts, doing the little things (like boxing out). Painter called to this constantly while also giving Trevion credit for all the things he did well.
I say this as someone who absolutely loved Trevion as a player. Clutch player, extremely talented and creative but playing disciplined basketball on offense and defense was not a strength.
See my response above. I'm talking about maturity and discipline in his game. To be fair to Trevion, the maturity comment is probably better aimed at Jaden as Tre's biggest challenge was playing disciplined basketball.
Maybe a little earlier in his career but by the time he was a senior he was pretty locked in save a few wild pass attempts here or there. Trevion himself implied in the post game that there were some in the locker room who didn’t take St Peters serious enough. I think we know who he was referring to.
Trevion was a very talented back to the basket player with his jump hook with great hands as well as a good rebounder. He had some skills and yes he would make some passes sometimes harder than the easier pass that was available. I'm glad Purdue got Trevion, but he sometimes wouldn't challenge the more physically defensive player and try to go to finesse a bit too early, but my biggest frustration was him not blocking out on FTs much too commonplace IMO
I definitely agree with that, but I don’t think that was a maturity or discipline issue, just him playing his game.
So you teach kids early to block out when the other team is shooting FTs. It is not hard to remember and I'm pretty confident that coaches repeat the emphasis in doing such from elementary through college. Many never error in trying to do that, Trevion never did that a lot. Almost all the time he got the rebound without doing so, but blocking out didn't happen with regularity. Sometimes it hurt Purdue and other times it didn't. I don't think the concept was hard, nor do I think Trevion was incapable of remembering, but he was not disciplined enough to do it all the time. He did put on quite a pregame show with his jump rope...
Meh, we really struggled at the end of the year....lost to iu, nw, killed by Maryland, barely beat wisky, Illinois...we were solid but our numbers show at the end of the year we were more like a 5 or 6 seed vs a 1 seed....we played well early and that really boosted our net ranking....
Yeah,a bit harsh. They are better this year. Jones has helped Smith taking some defensive pressure and press breaking pressure off of him. But they need to stay strong thru March.
I wanted to take a look to see stat wise how they compared (just the normal stats not advanced ones).
Loyer is about the same in almost every stat it seems...except for his shooting % is up from 38% overall to 42%--main difference is 3s are up from 32% to 39%.
Assists are down, but rebounds (maybe inflated a bit due to 6 vs UT) and steals are a bit up (could be due to the 7 steal performance on opening night haha)
Smith is a bit of a different story on offense...
He has increased his overall FG% from 41% o 50% and he has made and attempted 2x this year than what he had last year at this point. 2% went from 42% to 51% (he's made almost 3x more this year at this point than last and attempted just over 2x as many) and 3% is up from 41% to 48% (!!) --he's made 6 more and taken 8 more compared to previous season. This obviously equates to having scored a ton more than last year through 11 games--158 to 94 or 14 ppg vs 8.5 ppg.
Assists wise, he is up almost double (74 vs 40 last year) and his turnovers are 29 to 22. So 2.55 assists/TO a game to 1.8 assists/TO. He has been sensational, but I think he could be even better here and increase those assists to have that ratio go up as the season goes on.
Defensively, Braden is almost the same across the board for stats.
Hope they are both able to keep up the intensity, high level of play and shooting throughout the year. They make Purdue tough to beat when they are playing well (as we all know).
Perfect example. Even as a senior MP was saying that if Tre blocked out he could average 15+ rebounds a game. Yes, he became more disciplined as his career went on and yes, I agree that as a senior he was a very solid leader, but 'disciplined' would never be a word I'd use to describe his play.
I don't disagree with your assessment of performance based on W-L record. But the team was better early because they hit their shots and took care of the ball. At the end of the season, they seemed to be afraid to shoot and had many turnovers. Why that changed, maybe MP knows.
We did not lose in the NCAA to FDU because we were overrated.
There was definitely a stretch against FDU where guys hesitated to shoot but I don’t recall that in any of the other games late last season. Can you point to specific games that occurred?
There's some truth on both sides here. Certainly this team was not playing as well in the spring as they were through January, but the team that lost to FDU is the same team that won the BTT a week earlier.
I don't think the cause of the fall off is particularly mysterious. Braden was better than anyone could have reasonably expected as a freshman but was not nearly as good or consistent as he has been this year. It's pretty well documented that Loyer wasn't healthy from mid-January on and his numbers reflect that, shooting 43 for 115 (0.374) the first 18 games and 16 for 66 (0.242) the last 17 games. Without those two performing consistently, opponents could focus on taking away Zach as the remaining supporting cast (Newman, Gillis, Morton, etc.) just wasn't good enough to take the pressure of of Zach.
The dynamic this year seems pretty similar, i.e. Zach will do his thing and be amazing and the success of the team will depend upon consistent productivity from Braden and Fletch. Braden has been consistently excellent, it remains to be seen whether Fletch can produce on a more consistent basis.
What do you think the teams that win the national title do? Play their best players 20 mins??? No they play them 37-38-39-40 mins a game.
Why wouldn’t we play Braden as many mins as he can play? He’s a sophomore, better conditioned for the college game, and one of, if not the best PG in the country. You play your best players as many mins as it takes to win games. Get him breaks when you have big leads.
Let’s let CMP worry about Braden and Fletchers minutes
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Yes we did....we only had smith as a pg, Morton was our 3 and he couldn't score, we were too dependent on loyer to score and he was hurt, Jenkins and Newman were limited offensively if they couldn't shoot....we caught teams off guard early and the big ten was weak, plus we had a favorable schedule....we were a 4 or 5 seed at the end of the year....Definitely not a 1....plus if you watched that game, fdu was not that much of an upset....they were way more athletic than we were....we've fixed that athletic problem this year....
I also think people forget or underestimate the impact of Gillis' back injury. Healthy as a soph and shot 41.4% from three. Back issues as a junior and shot 35.6% (that was 30.4% if you exclude his record setting shooting night against PSU) and back to 50% this year.
He's got great form and when he's healthy and in the game with Zach, Fletch and Smith, he really completes our offense by being deadly setting up for the flare or kickout three or diving to the rim. TKR is better this year but he's not that guy.
None of them play 22-23 B1G indoor rugby games. At least not in over 2 decades.
In my mind this team is markedly better than last years team. I'm waiting to see how we perform in conference, but what I've seen so far says we are better.
We were not playing well down the stretch last year. Winning the VERY weak B1G by 3 games made it look better than it actually was. In the B1G tournament we beat 2 teams that didn't make the dance and a 10 seed by 2 points in the championship game. I agree with those that say we were actually more like a 3-4 seed than a true #1 last year.
We were not playing well down the stretch last year. Winning the VERY weak B1G by 3 games made it look better than it actually was. In the B1G tournament we beat 2 teams that didn't make the dance and a 10 seed by 2 points in the championship game. I agree with those that say we were actually more like a 3-4 seed than a true #1 last year.
They just weren't hitting. Shooting percentage went south. Combine that with lost possessions due to turnovers and you dig a hole.
As I said, I disagree that we weren't good enough to beat FDU. The B1G was weak, but FDU would not have won the B1G.
Of course Purdue was good enough. We didn't play well and they played better than they had been. It happens every day during a basketball season. it just happened to us on the biggest stage and we will hear about it forever.
It sucks but I don't understand the purpose of dwelling on it.
We were good enough to beat fdu, but we had to play decently....they were no pushover, especially how limited we were last year when we didn't hit shots and teams crowded edey....
Very good point. I am basing my enthusiasm for this year's team on the hope that they have fixed the problems that caused the early exit last year. I have no control over who gets playing time or what the team practices to correct past failures, but I can set my own expectations for how far they will go this year based on what I see on the floor compared with what I believe caused losses in the NCAA tournament.
Turnover count was a key factor in losses to inferior teams the past 2 NCAA tournaments. The turnover count is the first thing I look at when I check the box score at the end of a game.
