Welcome to the April 14th, 2023 rendition of the "Weekly Upload". We are proud to be sponsored by Reindeer Shuttle, locally owned and operated by Purdue graduates. Driving to the airport sucks let Reindeer Shuttle do the driving for you! With convenient pickup locations across Lafayette and on campus, Reindeer Shuttle will get you to the Airport safely and on time.
Kanon Catchings Story Simmers
The story of April, apparently, has simmered down after cooler heads prevailed. As you all know between our site and the other Purdue websites I am sure, there was a lot of smoke around Coach Painter's marquee 2024 verbal commit, Kanon Catchings. The versatile forward allegedly was planning to de-commit from Purdue, with reports even that he called Coach Brantley to do a soft decommit. This is a kid who truly did not like the recruiting process, like shutting the world off from recruiting him after he gave Matt Painter his verbal back in September of 2022.But, he is highly touted and rumor has it some people were getting to him at the Team USA camp, but in the end, it ends up being the biggest non-story of a story we have had this month. @Casey Bartley did a heck of a job contacting his sources and providing you guys with some of the earliest information on this saga while respecting his source's wishes and not explaining too much while explaining everything at the same time.
Then Casey also provided you all with an update that the Purdue staff was going to see Kanon today, which held true, for an in-home visit. We are not sure at what time this happened or is happening today, but from what we understand, the entire situation has settled down and Kanon remains a commit to your Purdue Boilermakers.
It was a good scare though, he is as big of a blue-chip prospect as any that has been a commit to Purdue, Rivals has him as a 4-star prospect currently, but that could go up. Other recruiting services have him as a 5-star prospect, which seems totally plausible. I am personally not in the group of people saying losing Kanon would not have been a major loss, because it simply would have been massive.
There is not much else to say about this situation, as it stands right now, he is verbal to Purdue.
Expect the Portal to be Active For Purdue
Okay, I refuse to speculate on who may or may not enter the portal, it just is not my thing. I have a general idea, but it is purely self-guided speculation with no backing, so there is really no reason to share that. I don't want to say someone's name, then it gets out there that I did, ya know, and then if the kid chooses to not leave I look like a butt.But, I will say, expect some players to enter the portal that is just kind of the odd men out here. I was very much surprised to not see many enter the portal after Coach Walters was hired, but now with spring ball all but over, players have a general feel of where they are on the depth chart for the summer. Either they will agree with it or they won't and will head to the portal.
Again, I don't want to speculate, but if any of you DM me, I will have a conversation, I just don't want a speculation post to be made here.
In terms of what Purdue needs, they need some help at corner, safety, running back, quarterback, and of course offensive line. I have Purdue over two scholarships right now, per my scholarship grid, so, regardless there will be movement.
The portal opens back up tomorrow for 15 days.
Eric Karner Decommits
One of the first verbals to Ryan Walters chose to decommit, and the writing was on the wall for this one. I reported on last week's Upload, that he would be a tough one to keep around, I just did not think he would decide this quickly.
But, "Baby Gronk" started to receive offers from SEC schools, including Alabama, and generally, that will pull a kid away from Purdue. I just hope the offers he is receiving are "committable" offers, as sometimes Power 5 schools give out offers as a backup plan in case plans A, B, C, D, and E does not work, ya know?
Alabama has offers out to 7 of the top 10 tight ends in the nation currently for 2024, but, my guess is one of those seven would choose Alabama, as it is Alabama.
Purdue will start recruiting tight ends heavily again.
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