Q: Why was Purdue so bad scoring on fast breaks this year? They used to be really good at it.
A: Well, above all else, with the opportunities it did have, Purdue often just struggled to finish. I think part of that was an athleticism issue in some cases, because the guys who were most likely to get out in the open floor weren't exactly above-the-rim athletes. I thought Terone Johnson, for example, left Purdue slightly less of an athlete than he came in, and that lack of elevation made things difficult. Rapheal Davis went through a stretch, too, where he just so many transition chances roll off.
Judgment was an issue, too, a lot of fast-break battles chosen unwisely, 1-on-2s, 2-on-3s, etc., the sort of stuff that supreme athletes and scorers can get away with, but lesser types probably ought to think better of. Falls under the whole "decision-making" umbrella.
But maybe as important as anything was simply the fact that Purdue didn't generate as many chances as it has before, because defense starts transition offense and the Boilermakers have not been a good defensive team the past few seasons and haven't forced nearly as many mistakes, turnovers and low-percentage shots as they used to. Not sure that when Purdue has been good, it's ever been a great defensive team, per se, but it's been disruptive and disruptive defense lends itself to higher-percentage offense.
You said that a few schools were "involved" with Ronnie Johnson before his transfer. How can they get involved if he hasn't announced he is leaving? Isn't that tampering?
A: Not necessarily. Third parties can communicate with third parties (or would that be fourth parties?) and in situations where schools are proactively being made aware of a player's looming availability, there's grey area.
If a school knows a player is coming available and talks to various people outside the family in order to mobilize to recruit a player, that amounts, in a sense to already recruiting the player, but maybe in haste I took some liberties with the word "involved" in this case. Maybe should have said "will be" instead of "are."
Tampering would be schools making efforts to convince other programs' players to transfer. (Don't think that's not going on all over the place, but not in this case, where the player's camp initiated.)
Purdue was really a bad outside shooting team again. How can that happen especially for a team in Indiana where players grow up playing so much?
A: First off, I think Purdue isn't as bad a shooting team as it made itself look this season. Obviously, 32.7 percent isn't great, but had the Boilermakers taken more of the right shots, I think that number would have been 3 or 4 percent higher and the product on the floor would have looked noticeably different.
Again, decision-making. Purdue jacked a lot of bad threes this season, some because of lapses in judgment, some because of over-aggressiveness and some because of over-eagerness by young players.
When guys like Terone and Ronnie Johnson and Errick Peck and even Rapheal Davis took the right shots, they were OK, if not good, shooters. When they didn't, the entire operation suffered.
Sterling Carter ran hot and cold before he got hurt and Kendall Stephens did to some extent as well. His issue was a quick trigger.
Stephens might be a great shooter for Purdue one day, as in one of the better ones in the college game.
I suspect experience is going to make him wiser and you're going to see him take better shots on average next season. I think you'll probably see a lot of those 2-for-7s from this season become more 3-for-6s next year. The encouraging thing for him is that he shot in bulk, but the shots that can be cut out were all misses, if that makes sense. A little slower trigger and he might have made the same 64 threes, or close to it, on 30-40 fewer attempts. All of a sudden you're looking at a 40-something-percent shooter.
That said, Purdue is going to need an aggressive Kendall Stephens next season, maybe needing him to be David Teague to A.J. Hammons' Carl Landry from an offensive framework perspective.
Will Purdue be a better shooting team next season? No way to know. Dakota Mathias will help, but he'll be a freshman.
So much depends, too, on their overall decision-making and that has to be considered an unknown at this point with so many freshmen coming in and Bryson Scott needing to take a leap forward this summer and the post game needing to do a better job generating good long-range looks for others.
A: Well, above all else, with the opportunities it did have, Purdue often just struggled to finish. I think part of that was an athleticism issue in some cases, because the guys who were most likely to get out in the open floor weren't exactly above-the-rim athletes. I thought Terone Johnson, for example, left Purdue slightly less of an athlete than he came in, and that lack of elevation made things difficult. Rapheal Davis went through a stretch, too, where he just so many transition chances roll off.
Judgment was an issue, too, a lot of fast-break battles chosen unwisely, 1-on-2s, 2-on-3s, etc., the sort of stuff that supreme athletes and scorers can get away with, but lesser types probably ought to think better of. Falls under the whole "decision-making" umbrella.
But maybe as important as anything was simply the fact that Purdue didn't generate as many chances as it has before, because defense starts transition offense and the Boilermakers have not been a good defensive team the past few seasons and haven't forced nearly as many mistakes, turnovers and low-percentage shots as they used to. Not sure that when Purdue has been good, it's ever been a great defensive team, per se, but it's been disruptive and disruptive defense lends itself to higher-percentage offense.
You said that a few schools were "involved" with Ronnie Johnson before his transfer. How can they get involved if he hasn't announced he is leaving? Isn't that tampering?
A: Not necessarily. Third parties can communicate with third parties (or would that be fourth parties?) and in situations where schools are proactively being made aware of a player's looming availability, there's grey area.
If a school knows a player is coming available and talks to various people outside the family in order to mobilize to recruit a player, that amounts, in a sense to already recruiting the player, but maybe in haste I took some liberties with the word "involved" in this case. Maybe should have said "will be" instead of "are."
Tampering would be schools making efforts to convince other programs' players to transfer. (Don't think that's not going on all over the place, but not in this case, where the player's camp initiated.)
Purdue was really a bad outside shooting team again. How can that happen especially for a team in Indiana where players grow up playing so much?
A: First off, I think Purdue isn't as bad a shooting team as it made itself look this season. Obviously, 32.7 percent isn't great, but had the Boilermakers taken more of the right shots, I think that number would have been 3 or 4 percent higher and the product on the floor would have looked noticeably different.
Again, decision-making. Purdue jacked a lot of bad threes this season, some because of lapses in judgment, some because of over-aggressiveness and some because of over-eagerness by young players.
When guys like Terone and Ronnie Johnson and Errick Peck and even Rapheal Davis took the right shots, they were OK, if not good, shooters. When they didn't, the entire operation suffered.
Sterling Carter ran hot and cold before he got hurt and Kendall Stephens did to some extent as well. His issue was a quick trigger.
Stephens might be a great shooter for Purdue one day, as in one of the better ones in the college game.
I suspect experience is going to make him wiser and you're going to see him take better shots on average next season. I think you'll probably see a lot of those 2-for-7s from this season become more 3-for-6s next year. The encouraging thing for him is that he shot in bulk, but the shots that can be cut out were all misses, if that makes sense. A little slower trigger and he might have made the same 64 threes, or close to it, on 30-40 fewer attempts. All of a sudden you're looking at a 40-something-percent shooter.
That said, Purdue is going to need an aggressive Kendall Stephens next season, maybe needing him to be David Teague to A.J. Hammons' Carl Landry from an offensive framework perspective.
Will Purdue be a better shooting team next season? No way to know. Dakota Mathias will help, but he'll be a freshman.
So much depends, too, on their overall decision-making and that has to be considered an unknown at this point with so many freshmen coming in and Bryson Scott needing to take a leap forward this summer and the post game needing to do a better job generating good long-range looks for others.
