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66 IllustrateD volume 25, issue 1 f m e n ' s b a s k e t b a l l r e c r u i t i n g f e a t u r e : G r a n t w e a t h e r f o r d BY BRIAN NEUBERT BNeubert@GoldandBlack.com I t may not be Grant Weatherford's intensity or unwavering effort that bother his opponents most. It may not be the new Purdue recruit's strength and ability to bully people physically, either. His unrelenting commitment to locking down his defensive assignment by any means nec- essary on defense is part of what rubs foes the wrong way, but even it's probably not the biggest annoyance. More likely, it's that smile and that clap, the way he responds to opponents who've begun to lose their cool because of his needling, the flamboyance that comes along with it. "People might perceive that as arrogance," said Mike Fox, one of the Hamilton Heights High School guard's former coaches for the Indiana Elite summer program. "It looks to me like it's him just saying he knows he's got you." And Weatherford "gets" a lot of people. It's not just his role to be an agitator; it's his identity. On the court, opponents hate Weatherford. He loves it. That joy comes out when he revels in his successes, smirking or glaring at flustered adversaries or harm- lessly taunting them with a few pronounced claps. They've responded in kind with shots, elbows, shoves, threats, whatever else. "I don't retaliate," Weatherford said. "I just smile at them, like I always do, and try to make kids feel dumb." It was this spring in Dallas when Weatherford was matched against five-star recruit Jaylen Brown and his Game Elite AAU team. Weatherford says that before that game, his coaches advised him about perceived "anger issues" on Game Elite's part, just the very sort of vulnerability Weather- ford's wired to exploit. And that he did. Game Elite went on to win that game, but not without the Weather- ford Factor taking its toll. In the second half, four techni- cal fouls were called in a matter of minutes, all of them retaliation of some kind against Indiana Elite's chief instigator. "One kid said he was going to put me on my back and basically beat the (heck) out of me," Weatherford said. "… Another kid pushed me down. One of them said something (inflammatory) right in front of the ref and the other one hit me with an elbow." Weatherford wasn't out there try- ing to start fights, but rather simply defending Brown, an über-athletic 6-foot-7 forward who can play any- where in the country, like he's nev- er been defended before. Fox jokes about "talking" Weath- erford through that game. "I had to try to calm him down because he was so competitive and so physical with Jaylen Brown," Fox said. "It was getting to be such an emotional game with the other coaches. Nobody had ever done that to Jaylen Brown before and they didn't know what to do." Few do. It was earlier that spring that Weatherford guarded Eron Gordon at a tournament in Indianapolis, bodying up the Class of 2016 blue-chipper unlike most he's ever seen. Gordon has been the physical aggressor against virtually everyone he's played against probably since Brian Neubert Grant Weatherford's physical nature and constant defensive intensity have made op- ponents hate him. But it's also made Purdue love him. PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE Boilermaker commitment's defensive intensity impacts opponents