Catchings would have offered Purdue a small forward to play the 3 rather than using a guard to play that position.
And to be honest, I haven’t seen anything from Catchings in his play at BYU that would justify my belief in him.
I do know Purdue would have been a lot better if he had never signed and allowed us to recruit another forward from high school or the portal. By quitting when he did, he left Painter no opportunity to recruit anybody to fill the role he had projected Catchings to play.
There are many here who claim Catchings was and is a cancer. There are many others who judge him based only by the stats he is putting up at BYU. Gillis isn’t putting up great stats either, but he fills a role at Duke.
While I liked Catchings, I’m not sure what role he would have filled at Purdue. And maybe that’s why he left. I personally saw Catchings as a nice tall 3. I thought he could fill that position and be a nice matchup against the other 3s that are forwards. I could see him as a 4, but I could never see Tkr as a center. So if he played the 4. It would either be as a backup or Purdue would have played small ball with Tkr at center and Catchings at the 4. And to be honest, I don’t see playing small as a winning solution.
So I saw Catchings as a player without a position at Purdue. I thought when painter was recruiting Catchings he would change his philosophy About using 3 guards . But I was wrong. Painter still wanted to play 3 guards. That probably led Catchings to wonder what position do I play? So he left.
As for Catchings playing at byu, he had zero practice with that team before they started playing. He spent the summer practicing at Purdue. I didn’t choose BYU, Catchings did. I’m not sure if it was a good fit. I don’t even know who was starting at BYU when Catchings arrived. Did BYU have a hole that Catchings could fill? I don’t know. I have noticed he put up some nice stats when given a chance to play 20+ minutes. I can’t tell you if he’s playing the 3 or the 4 at BYU. I also can’t tell you if byu plays a 3 guard offense or if they play a zone defense. All I really know is that their entire coaching staff has connections to the NBA and 18 year old recruits like that.
It looks as if Catchings made a bad decision and he now faces a wasted year at BYU. I’m unsure if his season would have been better this year if he stayed at Purdue. If Jacobsen wasn’t injured, Would Catchings have started at the three instead of Cox? Maybe, maybe not.
My lone closing thought is Purdue has too many guards. We will have a red shirt guard to add to the mix next year and we add west and ertel the following year. I believe we desperately need to add some height, size and talent to the three position.
A couple of years ago if you read my posts when we were recruiting first and tkr, I wanted Furst to play the 4 and Tkr to play the 3. I really hate the concept of the 3 guard system. I’d rather have a forward who can shoot the 3 at the 3 position than a guard. I believe a guard at the 3 results in unfavorable mismatches.
I also believe Smith is not tired. He’s just not able to succeed against taller more physical guards.
