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ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 2 31 f Tournament, win a Big Ten championship. You can't do it by yourself. You have to have everyone 1 through 11 or 12 … on the same page, doing whatever it takes." Purdue's five freshmen are walking into a situa- tion where they might be stepping right into roles they haven't necessarily entirely earned yet, by sheer virtue of the Boilermakers' roster dynamics. When Hummel and Co. came into a similar situ- ation years ago, there was never a feeling of enti- tlement despite that fast track to the floor. Hummel: "We knew we were needed, but at the same time we were all really good about being lev- el-headed and not letting it go to our heads and be- coming full of ourselves. We had a really mature group. Everybody understood we needed to play well for our team to win. You saw that from the first day of prac- tice, that the freshmen were going to be some of the best players on the team. But you have to understand you can't cut corners because of it. You still have to do things the right way. It's a process." A process that can start on pretty shaky ground. Basil Smotherman, now a sophomore: "As a freshman, you come in and you're confused, nervous, kind of scared and your heart's pounding. You don't know what's going to happen." So much is known about incoming players now- adays. And thus so much is expected, adding an additional layer of pressure, for some at least. Again, it's not easy. Physically, for most — the exceptional being the exceptions — the adjustment is daunting. For Ryne Smith, in 2008, it certainly was. Smith: "The biggest challenge was fighting through getting beat up every day. I came in and I was 6-3, 165 pounds, not physically ready to play, and there's Chris Kramer and Lewis Jackson and E'Twaun Moore and Keaton Grant dogging me every day. It's tough to stay the course, but eventually you realize that by playing against such good competition every day, you're going to get better. Because I didn't quit, I think it helped me in the long run." Tom Campbell Guards P.J. Thompson (left) and Dakota Mathias have each learned early lessons about playing through pain to start their college careers, with Thompson coming in with residual foot issues and Mathias contracting mono in the summer, then spraining his ankle twice in the first two weeks of practice.