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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 26, ISSUE 3 15 blow closely contested games wide open this season. They've all, it can be argued, won games for Purdue this season. How deep — some might say "load- ed" — is Purdue? Painter says he'd be perfectly com- fortable playing junior forward Basil Smotherman upwards of 30 minutes per game this season. Smotherman's redshirting. Purdue will lose games this season, almost assuredly, but with a dozen games in the books, you have to look pretty closely to dissect just where po- tential undoings may lie. Are the Boilermakers the best de- fensive team in college basketball on the perimeter? Most certainly not. That is a glaring vulnerability. Yet, Purdue ranks among the most difficult teams in the game to make shots and score against nonetheless. It's been a nearly best-case begin- ning to a season of sky-high expecta- tions. Purdue faced 11 teams before play- ing a ranked squad and put all 11 down by double-figure margins. When it took the floor against No. 17 Butler at the Crossroads Classic, so much of what had made Purdue good to that point betrayed it in the first loss of the A REBUILD BY BRIAN NEUBERT BNeubert@GoldandBlack.com KEY DATES IN PURDUE'S TRANSITION NOV. 13, 2013 Purdue signs high school se- niors Vince Edwards and Dakota Mathias of Ohio, as well as Mas- sachusetts forward Jacquil Taylor, to letters-of-intent as the fall sign- ing period for the Class of 2014 opens. Matt Painter laments, "We got everything we wanted except a center." Edwards would go on to start from Day 1 as a Boiler- maker; Mathias would start 17 games as a freshman and estab- lish himself as a crucial piece as a sophomore. As for the center situation, that ended up working out just fine. NOV. 18, 2013 After committing to Wake Forest about two months earlier and giving no indication whatsoever of reconsidering, Isaac Haas surprises the recruiting world by electing not to sign with the Demon Deacons. Painter grabs the first flight to Alabama, meets with Haas and winds up signing the massive center, after original- ly counseling him to stick to his verbal commitment. Today, Haas is one of college basketball's best centers as a sophomore.