Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/223221
f r o m e d i t o r b r i a n n e u b e r t focus shifts to the future T here's not a team on the planet that can go 1-11 and say to itself, "We have good enough players." And that's exactly the position Purdue must be in after losing all but one of its dozen games in 2013. The easy answer: Recruit your way out of it, knowing full well the difficulty of doing just that, the challenge of finding talented enough players to be relevant immediately while also arriving with as low a bust quotient as possible. It will obviously try, starting in earnest this weekend. Obviously recruiting is a yearlong deal, a process that the best and most successful coaches take breaks from about as often as they do breathing. But for Purdue, a season spent evaluating its personnel and needs — and there are many — and maybe shifting philosophies on the fly has created a fluid recruiting situation in which targets have come and gone, the process of narrowing the focus being a long and often-changing one. Until now, that is. Purdue has its focus narrowed and the bulk of that focus will be in West Lafayette this weekend, for what should be the most pivotal recruiting weekend of the young Darrell Hazell Era. Here's the deal, as you well know: Purdue is only very rarely, under very specific circumstances, going to attract the best of the best from the high school ranks. I'm not repeating that to get under your skin, but just to reflect reality. The challenge is to find good enough players — often those overlooked, or even cast aside, by others — who fit in the school's rigid culture, athletically, academically and socially. It's obviously very fair to say that Hazell must still prove himself as a recruiter. There's simply too little data to this point to know. But early returns on the coach and his staff's ability to find those fits would seem relatively positive. A year ago at this time, wide receivers DeAngelo Yancey and Dan Monteroso were basically cut loose by Kentucky and Boston College, respectively, and quickly scooped up by Purdue, which targeted them immediately thereafter. Yancey may have been Purdue's best overall offensive player when all was said and done this season, though that doesn't say much for an offense that did next to nothing. Too early to tell on Monteroso, but early returns were encouraging before he was injured in the preseason. One of the first defensive lineman Hazell and staff targeted was then-Illinois commit Evan Panfil, who played this season and should be poised to start next season. And we'll see what running back Dalyn Dawkins becomes. He did enough good things early in the season to get on the field. His future may still be bright. Purdue had to reach on some late recruits a year ago at this time, obviously, considering the circumstances of having to recruit most of the class in January. But there is some anecdotal evidence of Hazell and Co. unearthing some potential gems in a very short period of time. That's the goal again now, with a dozen-and-a-half or so recruits visiting this weekend, some of them more touted than others, some of them junior college players and most of them high schoolers spanning coast to coast. The immediate need for Purdue lies at offensive tackle, where the Boilermakers need a couple junior college Band-Aids to cover their depth chart's most open wounds. But no matter who they get, Matt Light and Brandon Gorin aren't walking through that door, so in ad- dition to recruiting reinforcements for next season's team, Purdue's going to need to spend the off-season strategizing around its deficiencies, something it didn't do all that well on offense this season, though to be fair, there were a lot of deficiencies. The results of this weekend will go a long way toward determining the caliber of reinforcements that'll be in tow in 2014. How those reinforcements are used and developed will be even more important, though. Always is around here. j GoldanDBlack express • volume 24, express 13 • 5