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86 IllustrateD volume 24, issue 5 f able to change the philosophy and the character of our team by bringing in high-level players. That's not saying we haven't had good caliber players (before) but maybe the previous years the winning mentality disappeared and that was one of the biggest and most important tasks for me to change. "We had to adjust the mentality and attitude of our team from just being happy where they are to saying 'let's get something bigger.' " Gajdzik will scour the earth for prospects. Of the players currently on the 10-man roster, six are inter- national players; one hails from Florida; one from Chi- cago; and two from West Lafayette. "I go anywhere where there's talent and anywhere there's people who would like to play for Purdue," he said. "It means that we're still recruiting Indiana, still recruiting the Midwest. For those players to change their prospective of Purdue, it takes a little bit lon- ger. We've been maybe not the premier program in the Midwest the last few years, so the top-notch recruits see different things. We're trying to change that. "… But the farther we go away from Indiana, it seems like the Purdue name is actually bigger. We go international, we go to South America and people know Purdue, for business, engineering. In Europe, it's the same way, so we have all our ties and we are trying to reach out to as many players as possible that we think will be helpful in what we're trying to accom- plish. And if we get a good bite, we go after it." And he goes after it hard. Dujovne, part of Gajdzik's first full class, felt the coach's intensity early. The San- tiago, Chile native got an email first, then as soon as he expressed some interest in learning more about the Boilermakers' program, Gajdzik was on him. "He does a good job," Dujovne said. "He used to call me, like there was one call (permissible) per week, and he would be like, 'Aaron, I will call you at 7 on Wednesday,' and at 7 on Wednesday the phone would be ringing. He would always be on top of things, emails, messages, I even got (postal) messages from Purdue to my house. My parents would get involved. He's good at it." Gajdzik, who coached at Northern Illinois before Purdue and was an assistant coach and player at powerhouse Baylor previously, has seen gradual im- provement in his tenure. In his first season, 2009-10, Purdue beat a couple ranked opponents, including the Wildcats, and had 11 wins overall, the program's most since 2003. The Boilermakers were up to 19 victories last season, the most in 26 years. But this season's been on yet another level; Purdue, ranked 34th in the country during the Big Ten Championships in late April, was 15-7 overall, with a 7-4 regular-season con- ference record that had it as the tournament's fourth seed. But it was ousted by the No. 32 Northwestern in the quarterfinals of the tourney April 25. Still, the Boilermakers are likely to be selected for the NCAA Tournament, which starts the second weekend in May. But it's only a step. "I think (the program) should be better, because the expectations are different," Dujovne said. "When I got here, for me to make the NCAA, it was like 'Wow,' but like for Ricky, for his first year, for him to make the NCAAs, it's a must. So better rankings should bring better recruits, right? "Our locker rooms are nicer now and we are get- ting even more (Purdue-issued Nike) clothes, so that should attract better players, even better than us. I feel that Purdue should get better because expecta- tions are higher, it's easier to get better players, so yeah, why not?" Gajdzik will keep believing, selling the program to all who will listen and pushing to increase not only the expectations but the ability to achieve them. "We are capable of winning a national champion- ship here," he said. "It's just going to take the right people and developing the players that we get in here and getting better level players. We've been fortunate the last four years that every year we've brought in the highest recruit in program history, that kind of shows you how the perception of our program changes, but there's still another level of players that we can touch on and get these guys and that's going to come with establishing ourselves in the rankings, establishing our program as a premier program in the Midwest, a premier program in the nation." j