With the season just completed, GoldandBlack.com is taking your questions as a way of looking back on the season and ahead to next. Here's our latest installment of our extremely original, in-no-way contrived Mailbag, undoubtedly the first of its kind anywhere.
Question: What would getting [db]Caleb Swanigan[/db] mean for Purdue's team next season? How would Painter configure his lineups for him?
Answer: Well, we'll say this first of all: Without Swanigan, Purdue can be a very good team next season after winning 20-some games this season with a bunch of freshmen playing important roles. It has some potentially very good players returning and will have the benefit for the first time in a while of being fairly rich in experience.
Obviously, A.J. Hammons' decision matters a lot and the Boilermaker coaching staff almost has to add a point guard - and almost certainly will - so projections at this point are badly premature, but we do know that [db]Rapheal Davis[/db], [db]Vince Edwards[/db], [db]Isaac Haas[/db], [db]Dakota Mathias[/db], [db]Kendall Stephens[/db], etc. are back and that's a solid core.
What Swanigan would do, if you ask me, is raise Purdue's ceiling, potentially from NCAA Tournament team to NCAA Tournament team capable of making noise in the NCAA Tournament, provided some other dominoes fall favorably. He's obviously an elite recruit who has not just produced against, but usually dominated, just about everyone he's played, whether that's been high school, AAU, all-star or international competition.
Especially if Hammons comes back, Purdue has the makings, as is, of a very good college front line. Swanigan could make it an elite front line, maybe one of the best rebounding frontcourts in the game right away should he choose Purdue.
Purdue's plan would be to use Swanigan at power forward alongside Hammons and/or Haas. Everyone's recruiting Swanigan as a 4 man, but one of Purdue's great selling points is that it doesn't think he'd have to play the 5 at all there, because of the Hammons/Haas combo. Swanigan can be a 5 very easily and be a very productive one and maybe even find less complicated defensive matchups as a center, but the 4 is viewed as his natural position and that's what he'd play at Purdue should he choose it. Again, everyone seems to be recruiting him as a forward more than a center, though, so I don't think that angle is unique to Purdue. Having two 7-footers, or at least one, is, however.
As for lineups, that's a great question, but for Purdue could be filed under "good problem to have." Currently, Purdue has Edwards at the 4 and he's already a good player, with plenty of room to improve. He could move to the 3 presumably because of his versatility, but that's Davis' position and a move to the wing could mitigate some of Edwards' natural advantages offensively.
Assuming Swanigan is a starter in this hypothetical - and that would be a safe assumption, because he's being recruited as such - then there's no way around Purdue bringing a really good player off the bench. That would be an early test of its chemistry, but again, a good problem to have.
(A Swanigan-and-a-center lineup would give Purdue all the best of its non-starter twin-towers experiment from this season, but with its 4 man being an excellent passer and decision-maker for that role. That was one of the big deterrents there this season. I just don't know if Hammons was ready to play that role.
Spacing the floor might seem like an issue for an offense that'd be featuring two low-post destination players, but it should be noted Swanigan has always done a lot of his best work posting from 15 feet out, on the wing, where his vision, passing and uncommon patience allow him to be most effective. So it's not like there would be two giants standing five feet apart posting up and getting in each other's way.)
It would be a really interesting scenario to see a Purdue team that has a chance to grow into a really good team organically inject a pre-eminent talent as a luxury, quite frankly.
The transition process would be an interesting one, because Purdue in its current form has excellent chemistry and Swanigan would have to fit in.
There's no reason to think he wouldn't. He's always shown to be an unselfish player for as high-profile as he is and he's an unbelievable passer for a post player and would be happy to pass out of post-ups to open shooters, who will presumably next season make shots, or play high-low with a capable center.
And Purdue's infrastructure would seem like a welcoming one. It's already wired to feed the post schematically and play inside-out and there are players on this roster - Edwards and Mathias, come to mind - that are going to be some of the best passers in the Big Ten for their positions immediately if they're not already.
Purdue would have to play really big with Swanigan and that's not something you see as much anymore, it seems, but it does come down to talent at the end of the day, and Swanigan would make an already talented Boilermaker team much more so.
With all that said, Purdue's team in its current form has a bright future.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
GoldandBlack.com Mobile for your Android
https://purdue.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=892&CID=818514
Question: What would getting [db]Caleb Swanigan[/db] mean for Purdue's team next season? How would Painter configure his lineups for him?
Answer: Well, we'll say this first of all: Without Swanigan, Purdue can be a very good team next season after winning 20-some games this season with a bunch of freshmen playing important roles. It has some potentially very good players returning and will have the benefit for the first time in a while of being fairly rich in experience.
Obviously, A.J. Hammons' decision matters a lot and the Boilermaker coaching staff almost has to add a point guard - and almost certainly will - so projections at this point are badly premature, but we do know that [db]Rapheal Davis[/db], [db]Vince Edwards[/db], [db]Isaac Haas[/db], [db]Dakota Mathias[/db], [db]Kendall Stephens[/db], etc. are back and that's a solid core.
What Swanigan would do, if you ask me, is raise Purdue's ceiling, potentially from NCAA Tournament team to NCAA Tournament team capable of making noise in the NCAA Tournament, provided some other dominoes fall favorably. He's obviously an elite recruit who has not just produced against, but usually dominated, just about everyone he's played, whether that's been high school, AAU, all-star or international competition.
Especially if Hammons comes back, Purdue has the makings, as is, of a very good college front line. Swanigan could make it an elite front line, maybe one of the best rebounding frontcourts in the game right away should he choose Purdue.
Purdue's plan would be to use Swanigan at power forward alongside Hammons and/or Haas. Everyone's recruiting Swanigan as a 4 man, but one of Purdue's great selling points is that it doesn't think he'd have to play the 5 at all there, because of the Hammons/Haas combo. Swanigan can be a 5 very easily and be a very productive one and maybe even find less complicated defensive matchups as a center, but the 4 is viewed as his natural position and that's what he'd play at Purdue should he choose it. Again, everyone seems to be recruiting him as a forward more than a center, though, so I don't think that angle is unique to Purdue. Having two 7-footers, or at least one, is, however.
As for lineups, that's a great question, but for Purdue could be filed under "good problem to have." Currently, Purdue has Edwards at the 4 and he's already a good player, with plenty of room to improve. He could move to the 3 presumably because of his versatility, but that's Davis' position and a move to the wing could mitigate some of Edwards' natural advantages offensively.
Assuming Swanigan is a starter in this hypothetical - and that would be a safe assumption, because he's being recruited as such - then there's no way around Purdue bringing a really good player off the bench. That would be an early test of its chemistry, but again, a good problem to have.
(A Swanigan-and-a-center lineup would give Purdue all the best of its non-starter twin-towers experiment from this season, but with its 4 man being an excellent passer and decision-maker for that role. That was one of the big deterrents there this season. I just don't know if Hammons was ready to play that role.
Spacing the floor might seem like an issue for an offense that'd be featuring two low-post destination players, but it should be noted Swanigan has always done a lot of his best work posting from 15 feet out, on the wing, where his vision, passing and uncommon patience allow him to be most effective. So it's not like there would be two giants standing five feet apart posting up and getting in each other's way.)
It would be a really interesting scenario to see a Purdue team that has a chance to grow into a really good team organically inject a pre-eminent talent as a luxury, quite frankly.
The transition process would be an interesting one, because Purdue in its current form has excellent chemistry and Swanigan would have to fit in.
There's no reason to think he wouldn't. He's always shown to be an unselfish player for as high-profile as he is and he's an unbelievable passer for a post player and would be happy to pass out of post-ups to open shooters, who will presumably next season make shots, or play high-low with a capable center.
And Purdue's infrastructure would seem like a welcoming one. It's already wired to feed the post schematically and play inside-out and there are players on this roster - Edwards and Mathias, come to mind - that are going to be some of the best passers in the Big Ten for their positions immediately if they're not already.
Purdue would have to play really big with Swanigan and that's not something you see as much anymore, it seems, but it does come down to talent at the end of the day, and Swanigan would make an already talented Boilermaker team much more so.
With all that said, Purdue's team in its current form has a bright future.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
https://purdue.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=892&CID=818514
