14 GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATE VOLUME 26, ISSUE 3
DECONSTRUCTING
Purdue's roster and
culture transformed almost
overnight. Here's how.
Purdue
Men's
Basketball
A
s the non-conference sea-
son wound down, Purdue's
was ranked in the top 10
nationally, popular among
the college basketball intel-
ligentsia and computers alike, one of
the nation's hottest — and seemingly,
best — teams.
It runs 10 players deep, those 10
all averaging roughly 14 minutes per
game or more.
Last season, Purdue got better when
Matt Painter cut his rotation around
this time a year ago. Now, there's no
indication of such things to come,
nor an easy answer to whose minutes
could be cut.
It has a preseason All-Big Ten cen-
ter in A.J. Hammons currently backing
up a potential Player-of-the-Year can-
didate in Isaac Haas, with a Fresh-
man-of-the-Year front-runner and for-
mer McDonald's All-American in Caleb
Swanigan starting at power forward
next to them.
That says nothing of the reigning
Big Ten Defensive Player-of-the-Year,
Rapheal Davis, who starts in the back-
court, pushing past starters and prov-
en contributors Kendall Stephens and
Dakota Mathias to reserve roles.
And it says nothing of one of the
conference's most improved, and
easily overlooked, players in Vince
Edwards starting at small forward; he
moved there from "power" forward to
make room for the aforementioned
high school All-American.
And that says nothing of the trio
of high-level shooters — Stephens,
Mathias and freshman Ryan Cline
— the Boilermakers have to counter-
balance their elite collection of size.
All three of those players have made
second-half runs of shot-making to
Tom Campbell
