As Matt Painter said Tuesday night following his team's less-than-riveting rout of IPFW, standing on the eve of Big Ten play, "We can go either way" now.
Indeed, the Boilermakers have a high ceiling for improvement heading into the conference season. That's always kind of a back-handed compliment, though.
Purdue looks like a team right now that could use an extension, a few more non-conference games to give it more of a chance to find itself, because it's not happened quite yet.
But that's not reality. The plane leaves for Iowa City in a week.
This looks like a team that's going to have a difficult time scoring some nights, with a top-heavy attack heavy on perimeter shooting and the play of its leading scorer, Robbie Hummel.
Purdue has some solid pieces in place, but they're all more supporting actors than they are leading men at this point.
That could be overcome if the Boilermakers were where Painter envisioned them defensively.
In the summertime, the coach genuinely seemed to believe this group could be very good defensively, and they've certainly had their moments. But the valleys have matched the peaks in that sense and lapses have tended to come at inopportune times. There was kind of an it factor, an edge, to those David Teague- or Chris Kramer-led teams that this one doesn't seem to have, at least not yet.
The other concern is health. Sandi Marcius' injury, which may not even be worth noting beyond the fact he didn't play tonight, is a new one, but nothing new. Hummel, Lewis Jackson, Marcius, Terone Johnson and John Hart have already been limited by injury this season, that we know of, some of them with conditions/issues that could linger.
Lineups are still bound to be tweaked, with the team's big men having been pedestrian at best to this point. Inexperience at certain spots is not helping, and the balance between Painter's best scoring options and best defensive options looks like it's been a difficult one to strike.
So add it all up and there's reason to wonder how this team is going to fare in Big Ten play.
But here's where Purdue is paying the price for its own success. All of a sudden, 10-3 is something to scoff at and a team that's a handful of possessions away from being 12-1 is completely off the grid, being doubted, if not ripped, on the Internet by its own fans.
Hypotheticals are what they are, but while the losses at Xavier and against Butler were unpalatable for everyone involved and probably car-bombed the Boilermakers' case for a favorable seeding should they be in position to have to make such an argument, they also showed this team can actually play. There are good players on this team, players a lot of teams of Purdue's level would be thrilled to have.
(The High Point and Western Carolina games, I don't know what to make of those beyond the fact that they may show some attention-span issues. That should be correctable.)
Those freaking out on the Internet and those of us (me) writing about all these reasons that could be Purdue's undoing aren't looking at the fact that the Boilermakers were absolutely, positively good enough to win those two games, but just didn't. I know that's no consolation whatsoever to fans. It's not to Matt Painter or Robbie Hummel or Lewis Jackson or whoever else, either.
Make no mistake: Purdue enters Big Ten play with questions, no doubt, maybe more than most of its conference peers. But it has shown it can play.
We just don't know yet if it will.
Let's say Purdue is up six with six minutes left at Iowa. Will it continue to function offensively? Will it get stops? Will it get that long rebound or block out? Will it make a freaking free throw?
All remains to be seen. But this is a proud program with a culture of winning in place. That's a good start.
But it could go either way.
The only meaningful take-away from the IPFW game - a win no one's going to beat their chest over after what happened against Butler - was that maybe Purdue did grow up a bit from a couple weeks ago. After the X game, it almost took an apocalyptic loss at home to that Boilermaker nuisance that is Western Carolina.
This time, after the Butler collapse, it left no doubt whatsoever.
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