Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s gotten a lot stronger at OTE and is like 220 pounds now.
***Official B1G Off-Season Thread***
- Thread starter IUBtown
- Start date
Izzo not going after a center is a little puzzling. I guess he prefers playing four-on-five on offense. Not fvcking great, Bob.
I think Jones is exactly the type of player that proves the point. 6 freshman is inefficient recruiting. Gillis may have been leaving regardless, but if he wasn’t, not holding a spot or two open for him or another guy that could make the rotation isn’t ideal.
Agree. Candidly, with the unlimited transfers, it's almost silly to have 13 guys on scholarship. Odds are pretty good that your 12th and 13th guys will end up transferring, either because they aren't good enough to crack the rotation or they are good but just can't beat out the guys in front of them.
Give me 3 guys in each class and 1-2 transfers every year. That way, you can stay old and experienced and fill in your needs from the portal. And you can weather 1-2 guys transferring out each year if that happens.
As a purist, I love seeing guys come in as freshmen, get better each year and leave after their senior year. But that's just so hard to do consistently with NIL and the portal. So if the NCAA doesn't find the balls to rein in the wild west at least a little, programs might as well take advantage of it.
Gillis was leaving no matter the circumstances. Painter loves to red-shirt players, so I'm sure some freshmen go that route.
I don’t think he’ll do it every year but I think he liked the guys in this class enough that he couldn’t say no. When Jacobsen reclassified to this class, Painter went all in and Harris was a take all the way. Don’t think he’s taken a class this big since 2007 IIRC.
Even coaches that truly want to hold onto the 4 year player model (often because they don’t have the NIL to compete) need to do as you suggest and keep two slots to address gaps via portal.
The risk obviously, is losing their top recruits in year two or three to a bag. If they are able to come up with the cash to keep them, it is very tough to afford a good portal guy.
Yeah that's going to be interesting to watch. He's kept guys for the most part so far but Edey was a big reason for that. Kind of a perfect storm with his whole NIL limitations which gave him little reason to leave and then that kept the other guys there. Will be interesting to see how everything unfolds moving forward.
I think Edey would’ve stayed regardless of the NIL situation. He’s said multiple times how grateful he is for Painter believing in him and would’ve stayed at Purdue. The only real question was whether he’d stay after his junior year.
I think even if Purdue had a crazy NIL budget, you wouldn’t Painter change his approach much. Culture-fit is huge for him and it’s burned him multiple times in the past. Purdue has plenty of NIL if they truly wanted to get in a bidding war but it’s not Painter’s style. Guys know if they come to Purdue they’ll have a chance to do well for themselves NIL-wise and we’ve yet to lose a transfer for a guy just looking for a bag. Goes back to the culture component IMO.
I feel like some of the not losing guys was due to Edey staying and having a chance at a title. Edey not having really higher NIL options helped that. Think there's some carry over from that this year but we will see. If Purdue had NIL to spend you'd see them jump into the races with atleast a few top transfers but I hadn't seen them be involved with many of any at all. Like I said it'll be interesting to watch moving forward.
Not sure why you’d assume that if Purdue had NIL to spend you’d see them jump into the races with a few top transfers. It’s not the lack of NIL that is stopping Painter from going after top transfers. They brought in some big-time transfers for football.
I think Painter’s philosophy will continue to be to complement the roster with transfers versus completely rebuilding a team with them.
I've heard Edey ended up making north of $1MM last year. He had several Canadian sponsorship deals.
Part of the continuity was the makeup of the roster but there were a couple I could have seen move on.
Braden Smith - Where was he going to go? He had an ideal setup and being a local kid, he probably couldn't have made much more elsewhere
Fletcher Loyer - Not sure there was a huge market for him as a shooter who didn't shoot great as a frosh and a minus defender
TKR - I could have seen him moving on but he's a different dude. Very cerebral. Big into philosophy from what I hear. Jut not sure how to gauge him.
Caleb Furst - Obviously not a great minutes situation but on a personal level, he's pre-med and very focused on a career outside of basketball. Also dates a star Purdue volleyball player
Mason Gillis - A Purdue guy who was already halfway thru his Master's at Purdue. I think he'd have come back for his COVID year if we had room for him. I wish we did because everybody could use a guy like Gillis.
Ethan Morton - Not much market for him. Likely would have had to take a step down and gone to school like Duquesne who probably didn't have much NIL money
Camden Heide - Redshirt freshman coming off injury. Given he's from Minnesota, he strikes me as a transfer option in the future if he gets passed up by a frosh but he didn't have a ton of options last year.
Myles Colvin - True freshman - son of a Purdue football legend and brother of a Purdue volleyball all-American
Brian Waddell - Son of a Purdue player who was coming off an injury
Will Berg - If you are a wide bodied Big who wants to play professionally, who better to learn from than Brandon Brantley and Matt Painter and he also got to battle Zach Edey every day in practice.
7 of those 10 guys are from Indiana so they had some local NIL options that they might not have seen elsewhere. Only 2 of the 6 guys coming in are Indiana guys and Catchings played for OTE last year so we don't have the local ties we've had had before.
But you'd think they'd atleast reach out to some guys, not necessarily just SR mercenaries but soph/jrs. Haven't really seen any of it.
We went after Nigel Pack and got outbid by Miami. But we definitely haven't dabbled like some teams have.
Don’t forget Heide’s dad grew up in Lafayette and that side of the family is all Purdue. Cam grew up a big Purdue fan.
Sounds like Smith got a pretty big offer from Gonzaga but turned it down.
Forgot about Heide. Which is odd because I graduated high school with his uncle.
I'm curious to see what the team looks like if these guys stick around. Burgess and Jacobsen are more mobile bigs who can shoot and move. Cox and Harris are bulldogs defensively (I think both won conference DPOY in their conferences) and can make tough shots at the high end high school level (we'll see if it translates). Catchings is obviously something we aren't used to having. Benter is the only guy that fits with what we've been the last several years (reminds me of Sasha and Dakota).
Culture/fit has burned a lot of teams in the B1G recently, I'm glad Painter isn't taking a ton of transfers each year. The two best teams last year relied very little on the transfer portal (both had 1 guy who transferred in for the season).
If you are speaking about Purdue specifically (which i was not) neither of their guards were going to get big deals elsewhere and their gig on that team was pretty damned sweet.
Every case is unique. Illinois had a good team this year but the year before the team didn’t mesh too well. Always a risk when you have so much roster turnover year to year.
The real housewives of Champaign was bad mix of transfers + freshmen + Coleman Hawkins trying to be the adult in the room. That’s why last year was old guys like Domask, Quincy, and Harmon. I could easily see next year Illinois be like 2 years ago, a Euro(or 2), and the adults in the room are DGL + guy with the yips.
Considering the top 2 teams this year had great cultures and fit within the team, yes.
Most teams would jump at Smith in a heartbeat. Gonzaga tried to lure him away with NIL after his freshman season.
Spencer was the only transfer in this past year. Newton transferred in the year prior. Karaban, Clingan and Castle were all UConn recruits.
Rag tag squad likely complete. 1% chance Cam Christie comes back and Ben Johnson finds a 500k sack on the sidewalk.
Starters
PG Lu'Cye Patterson - 2nd team All-AAC
SG Mike Mitchell Jr
SF Femi Odukale - 3rd team All-Conference USA
PF Dawson Garcia
C Frank Mitchell - 2nd team All-MAAC
Bench
PG Isaac Asuma - 4 star recruit
SG Brennan Rigsby - Oregon transfer
W Caleb Williams - D3 transfer
PF Parker Fox
C Trey Edmonds - UTSA transfer
Deep Bench
W Kadyn Betts
PF Grayson Grove
Starters
PG Lu'Cye Patterson - 2nd team All-AAC
SG Mike Mitchell Jr
SF Femi Odukale - 3rd team All-Conference USA
PF Dawson Garcia
C Frank Mitchell - 2nd team All-MAAC
Bench
PG Isaac Asuma - 4 star recruit
SG Brennan Rigsby - Oregon transfer
W Caleb Williams - D3 transfer
PF Parker Fox
C Trey Edmonds - UTSA transfer
Deep Bench
W Kadyn Betts
PF Grayson Grove
Interesting that TSJ's case is going to trial, recent info seemed like the case against him was tenuous at best.
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