24 ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 3
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F R O M E D I T O R B R A I N N E U B E R T
T
hrough seven games,
Purdue looked like a
team headed back to the
NCAA Tournament.
Through 12, however, it
looks like a team that could
just as soon be hard-pressed
to qualify for the Big Ten Tour-
nament.
Kidding, of course, but the imbal-
ance between the Boilermakers' start
to their non-conference slate and
their finish was night and day, as they
say.
The team that toughed out met-
tle-testing wins over BYU in Maui,
then over North Carolina State in
Mackey Arena, looked like a panicky
puddle when times got tough in loss-
es to Vanderbilt and Notre Dame,
both of them against teams that ar-
en't markedly better than
Purdue, if better at all, but did
handle themselves better.
Early in the season, Purdue
looked patient, poised, calm
and composed. In its past two
games, it's looked the antith-
esis of all those things in the
face of deficits, coming apart at the
seams.
It seems hard to argue it's part of
the process for a young team, because
the process looked so drastically ac-
celerated in Maui and immediately
thereafter. Again, Purdue looked like
an NCAA Tournament team.
Purdue is young, but is young even
the problem?
The Boilermakers have not gotten
what they've needed to this point
from A.J. Hammons, not even close
actually, despite what appeared to be
the junior big man's best efforts prior
to the season.
That is looking more and more like
a situation where maybe everyone
just needs to accept Hammons for
what he is: A good player most nights,
a great player every blue moon, but
simply a consistently inconsistent
player and personality.
No shame in that, but Hammons
has always been viewed in the context
of what he can be. If there weren't cer-
tain eccentricities to him, maybe this
would all be a moot point, because he
might have gone someplace else out
of high school and would already be
in the NBA.
Kendall Stephens is a mystery.
On the surface, it looks like he's
having a solid season, but by the
A Tale Of Two Teams
Trent Johnson, Agent
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