Gold and Black is a multi-platform media company that covers Purdue athletics like no one else.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/790203
GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 27, ISSUE 4 58 and watched from under the basket. "It was more of an instinct thing," Swanigan remem- bered, weeks later, with typical matter-of-factness. Shortly thereafter, Swanigan would go on to make the biggest pass of that game — to P.J. Thompson for Pur- due's most important field goal, a three-pointer with a little more than a minute left — then win the game by fouling out Trevor Thompson with five seconds remain- ing and sinking the game-deciding free throw. But that tip-in was the game's defining play for Swan- igan and a perfect encapsulation of the player himself. It was simply refusal to fail. If Swanigan's historic season can be summarized in one three-second clip, that play might be it. It was an atypical play, but nothing Swanigan does should surprise anyone anymore. It's one of many examples of Swanigan's will, the one characteristic that ties everything about this unique play- er and person together and has made him everything he's become. There was the play in Purdue's narrow win at ranked Maryland — a win that truly put the Boilermakers back in the hunt for the Big Ten championship after they'd fall- en a few games behind — where Swanigan didn't feel like he could quite secure a long rebound in the lane, so instead of fighting that losing battle he batted it with two hands right to P.J. Thompson for a pivotal three-pointer. He wound up credited with both a rebound and an as- sist, without so much as ever having actually possessed the ball. That's hard to do. There was a play at Indiana where Swanigan sprinted the floor trailing Carsen Edwards on a one-man break. After the officials missed a goal tend, Edwards' shot came off the rim, and Swanigan could only get a single hand on the rebound. But he used it to smack the ball right to Vin- cent Edwards for another important crunch-time basket. Whether that play was purposeful or not is unclear, but if it wasn't, it was a case of Swanigan making his own luck with effort. And there have been too many examples of worth-the- price-of-admission rebounding to even mention. It's been a brilliant season Swanigan's enjoyed in this, his sophomore year at Purdue, one that will be remem- bered in time as one of the most remarkable the program has seen, one that has legitimately put him at the top of the national player-of-the-year food chain. He's a finalist for the Wooden Award and the Naismith Trophy and may be the leader as of mid-February for both, along with any other such national honor. Swanigan Fatigue — the ridiculous standard he's set during this season — might have fueled some midsea- son pro-Ethan Happ buzz on the Big Ten Player-of-the- Year leaderboard, but that could prove over time to be just a manufactured horserace in what should otherwise be an open-and-shut sort of case. Purdue's star has been the most dominant force in the conference and there's been no close second. Swanigan's leading the Big Ten in scoring. He's nearly leading the nation in rebounding. Should his numbers hold — and his marked consis- tency through the first 13 league games suggests it surely will — he'll probably become the first player since Evan Turner to lead the Big Ten in both categories. A player who's grabbed 22 rebounds in a game this sea- son and leads college basketball in double-doubles has also made nearly 50 percent of his three-pointers. The former McDonald's All-American was good as a freshman last season. Today, he's twice the player he was then. Everything about him is improved. Significantly. His demeanor is different. He's found the poise that sometimes escaped him as an over-eager freshman last season. Never could that have been put to the test more than at Michigan State, the school to which Swanigan was verbally committed for a few weeks a few years ago. The response to him was predictable in his first, and probably only, visit to the Breslin Center in a Purdue uniform. It was pure loathing, nothing terribly personal, just college basketball's unique style of life-on-the-road animosity. Swanigan's response: 25 points, 17 rebounds and an emphatic Purdue win. Teammate Dakota Mathias was asked what's im- pressed him most about Swanigan. "Obviously, his work ethic, but that's too generic an answer," Mathias said. "I'd say it's his mental toughness Swanigan's drive drives him to historic season at Purdue