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VOLUME 26, ISSUE 2 15 PURDUE MEN'S BASKETBALL ROSTER No. Name Class Position Height Weight Hometown/Last School 1 Johnny Hill Sr. (5) Guard 6-3 187 Glenbard Heights, Ill./Texas-Arlington 2 Jon McKeeman Sr. Guard 6-1 190 Fort Wayne/Carroll 3 P.J. Thompson So. Guard 5-10 188 Indianapolis/Brebeuf 5 Basil Smotherman Jr. Forward 6-6 230 Indianapolis/Lawrence North 11 Stephen Toyra Sr. Guard 6-3 185 Lafayette, Ind./Faith Christian 12 Vince Edwards So. Forward 6-8 225 Middletown, Ohio/Middletown 14 Ryan Cline Fr. Guard 6-5 190 Carmel, Ind./Carmel 20 A.J. Hammons Sr. Center 7-0 250 Gary, Ind./Oak Hill Academy (Va.) 21 Kendall Stephens Jr. Guard 6-7 205 St. Charles, Ill./St. Charles East 22 Grant Weatherford Fr. Guard 6-2 198 Cicero, Ind./Hamilton Heights 23 Jacquil Taylor R-Fr. Forward 6-10 240 Cambridge, Mass./Beaver Country Day 24 Grady Eifert Fr. Forward 6-6 221 Fort Wayne/Don Bosco Prep (Ind.) 31 Dakota Mathias So. Guard 6-4 200 Elida, Ohio/Elida 35 Rapheal Davis Sr. Forward/Guard 6-6 217 Fort Wayne/LaLumiere School 44 Isaac Haas So. Center 7-2 282 Hokes Bluff, Ala./Hokes Bluff 50 Caleb Swanigan Fr. Forward 6-9 250 Fort Wayne/Homestead F irst, Purdue's fortunes turned on a dime last January and the Boilermakers surprised the Big Ten — and their fans, pleas- antly — by winning two-thirds of their conference games en route to returning to the NCAA Tournament. Then, center A.J. Hammons came back for his senior season. Then, McDonald's All-American Caleb Swanigan signed on for his freshman season. And with those two off-season happenings coming on the heels of the program's resurgent winter, ex- pectations around West Lafayette were set aflame. "People you never knew were even basketball fans are excited," senior Rapheal Davis said. Hammons' return and Swanigan's addition laid in place two monu- mental pieces atop a strong core, a nucleus that includes a collection of quality size few teams in college basketball can match; a group of sophomores who were advanced as freshmen and should be better with experience; a wealth of shooting specialists; and all the makings of what could again be a very good de- fensive team, led by the Big Ten De- fensive Player-of-the-Year in Davis and maybe college basketball's best rim-protector in Hammons. "We literally have every piece of the puzzle with this team," said for- ward Vince Edwards, one of those sophomores. "For us to not be able to go out there and put it together, it would be on us. Not just our coaches, but mostly on the guys because we know what we need to do in order to get it done. We might still be a young team, but we have more experience this year than we had last year. So for us to go out there and not put it all together, it would be a slap in the face to ourselves." Because of those pieces, ex- pectations locally are higher than they've been since E'Twaun Moore, JaJuan Johnson and Robbie Hum- mel brought credible Final Four as- pirations to West Lafayette. It's been an almost-stunning reversal for a program that finished last in the Big Ten in March of 2014 and didn't ap- pear bound for much more last year as the calendar turned to 2015. Nationally, however, Purdue is generally considered merely a low- er-end top-25 team — it came in 24th in the preseason coaches poll and was unranked in many media forecasts — and has been picked by exactly no one to win a loaded Big Ten. Time will tell whether Purdue is under-rated nationally, over-rated locally or neither of the two, but in the meantime, despite high expec- tations, the Boilermakers can't pos- sibly think of themselves as having arrived. BY BRIAN NEUBERT BNeubert@GoldandBlack.com Piece Of The Puzzle'