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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2 50 section. It can be, and often is, debated which Big Ten campus is home to the league's best student section. Maryland's, though, might be its most fearsome, a towering, vertical wall of East Coast/traditional-ACC rau- cous. This was the backdrop Purdue's 18-year-old gazed into as he stepped to the foul line to beat the Terrapins, then 20-2 and ranked 17th nationally. Edwards went through his routine, whirling the ball around his hips a few times, a couple dribbles, then the shot. "It was so loud," Edwards said afterward. "I was really nervous." It didn't matter. He made the first, then the second. Purdue won, over a ranked team on the road, after the Boilermakers led for fewer than 60 total seconds. Those free throws might have changed the whole Big Ten season, earning the Boilermakers the second of the six consecutive wins that vaulted them toward their out- right league title and seemed to initiate the second-half slide that took the Terps out of contention. And it was Carsen Edwards that delivered the play that delivered the victory that helped deliver the title, one of the highlights of a season dotted with flashes of bril- liance, suggesting more to come, much more. Fast-forward to summer. Purdue's playing Israel at the World University Games, toughing out an overtime win against what might have been the best team the eventual event runners-up faced overseas. Edwards scored 36, an even three dozen. He drained eight three-pointers, many of them of the closely guarded variety, kind of his thing. "He takes tough shots, but he makes tough shots," guard and returning Big Ten All-Defense team honoree Dakota Mathias said. "He likes feeling that contact, he likes feeling that guy there and likes that contact, but that's the kind of athlete that he is. He's big and strong and can handle that contact to finish through it. He's a certified scorer." When Edwards went off in Taipei, no one was sur- prised. Purdue had been privy to such outbursts in practice all summer, as it had been the year prior, just not quite as frequently. "Watch," one staffer said, after one of those summer practice blowups, "he'll get 30 in the first game." Now, fast-forward a few more months, to Oct. 21. It's Purdue's annual fan day scrimmage in Mackey Arena, open to the public. It wasn't the first official game, but it was the first bas- ketball of the year played in Mackey Arena in front of a crowd. And Edwards got 30. He took 16 shots and made 11, and committed no turn- overs. It was the usual — quick-trigger threes, fall-away jumpers off the dribble, displays of his blistering speed in the open floor and hundred-mile-per-hour style, the rep- ertoire that could make him one of the Big Ten's, maybe college basketball's, breakout scorers in the months to come. This summer seems to have primed him for it. He stood out for USA Basketball's 19-and-Under World Championships team in June, playing alongside — and against during try-outs — some of the best players in college basketball while being coached by John Calipari, Danny Manning and Colorado's Tad Boyle, perhaps some valuable new voices to play a role in his development. Then came the World University Games, where he av- eraged 17-and-a-half points, second to only Vincent Ed- wards on Purdue's roster. If there was one thing this summer revealed about Purdue, it might be this: Its sophomore guard is this close to being very, very good. (In the preseason, he even received a first-team All- Big Ten vote.) And he looks very, very different. During practices, Edwards appears more animated, engaged, more vocal than a year ago, when the term "brooding" was often brought to mind. "I think sometimes when things aren't going his way, he can get down and get frustrated," fellow guard and "Once that light comes on about the details, then I don't know if he has a ceiling at the college level." — Matt Painter on Carsen Edwards