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: Where does Jacquil Taylor fit in for Purdue next season?
Answer: No clue. No clue at all.
Couple things have to happen before we can even venture a guess, though, too: 1) We have to find out whether [db]A.J. Hammons[/db] is staying or going and 2) Taylor has to be healthy.
If Taylor is healthy, he gives Purdue something it doesn't otherwise have, a long, tall and athletic frontcourt player who's really mobile and springy (again, if healthy) and really impressed people this season in practice - when he did practice - with his effort. He's a player, one would think, that could contribute defensively because of his ability to block shots while also being mobile enough to guard on the perimeter in Purdue's switch-heavy man-to-man defense.
But where he fits in from a personnel perspective, I have no idea.
Is he a power forward? On paper, yes, but he's so very different from current 4 man [db]Vince Edwards[/db] that it would presumably change things offensively.
Is he an undersized but athletic center? Maybe, but if Hammons is back alongside [db]Isaac Haas[/db], where are the minutes? And again, things would change.
Something Purdue coveted about Haas this season was the fact he and Hammons were interchangeable in their styles offensively, so the Boilermakers didn't have to play differently when one came in for the other.
It's an important off-season for Taylor, because he has to be healthy and he has to get stronger, so those elements have to be addressed really before any projections can credibly be made about his role next season.
But again, at best, Taylor gives the Boilermakers something they don't have, as is. Purdue is not the most athletic team on paper and doesn't have a really mobile big man as of right now, more from a defensive standpoint than anything.
Offensively, Taylor would seem like an unknown, but he does have the physical tools, it seems like, to be valuable defensively.
How much that can make them better remains to be seen, because there is no apparent urgent need in his potential roles, at least not as of now.
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.
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https://purdue.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=892&CID=818514
Question: Where does Jacquil Taylor fit in for Purdue next season?
Answer: No clue. No clue at all.
Couple things have to happen before we can even venture a guess, though, too: 1) We have to find out whether [db]A.J. Hammons[/db] is staying or going and 2) Taylor has to be healthy.
If Taylor is healthy, he gives Purdue something it doesn't otherwise have, a long, tall and athletic frontcourt player who's really mobile and springy (again, if healthy) and really impressed people this season in practice - when he did practice - with his effort. He's a player, one would think, that could contribute defensively because of his ability to block shots while also being mobile enough to guard on the perimeter in Purdue's switch-heavy man-to-man defense.
But where he fits in from a personnel perspective, I have no idea.
Is he a power forward? On paper, yes, but he's so very different from current 4 man [db]Vince Edwards[/db] that it would presumably change things offensively.
Is he an undersized but athletic center? Maybe, but if Hammons is back alongside [db]Isaac Haas[/db], where are the minutes? And again, things would change.
Something Purdue coveted about Haas this season was the fact he and Hammons were interchangeable in their styles offensively, so the Boilermakers didn't have to play differently when one came in for the other.
It's an important off-season for Taylor, because he has to be healthy and he has to get stronger, so those elements have to be addressed really before any projections can credibly be made about his role next season.
But again, at best, Taylor gives the Boilermakers something they don't have, as is. Purdue is not the most athletic team on paper and doesn't have a really mobile big man as of right now, more from a defensive standpoint than anything.
Offensively, Taylor would seem like an unknown, but he does have the physical tools, it seems like, to be valuable defensively.
How much that can make them better remains to be seen, because there is no apparent urgent need in his potential roles, at least not as of now.
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
