Three Thoughts From The Weekend: Purdue vs. Alabama, football camp season and more

GoldandBlack.com’s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind. In this week’s edition, Purdue’s series with Alabama, football recruiting and more.

ON PURDUE VS. ALABAMA

It may not necessarily be the history-rich, bluebloody name brand that will immediately resonate with everyone immediately, but Purdue has its biggest non-conference home game in years coming up this season.

This two-game home-and-home series with Alabama will essentially complete a rare (and neat) best-of-three neutral-home-away series between two current power programs. They both just made the Final Four and aren’t falling off any time soon.

‘Bama bringing back Mark Sears, the offensive craftsman who made 200 threes (give or take) vs. the Boilermakers in Canada, may have positioned the Tide to be No. 1 nationally by the time this game takes place. And it may mean Purdue will be facing the player-of-the-year favorite instead of relying on one.

It’s the biggest non-conference event, I think, in Mackey Arena since Duke visited in 2011, a decade-and-a-half ago, and should be pretty treacherous waters for the Tide. Alabama may very well be No. 1 but no one who knows anything would ever consider Purdue a real underdog on its home floor on a night like this.

But the bigger point here is to give credit to both these programs for doing this, especially Alabama for taking this team it has into one of the hardest places to play possible. It didn’t necessarily have to, but Nate Oats hasn’t been afraid of anybody in this regard, nor has Matt Painter, and, hey, look whose teams just finished their seasons in Glendale. Purdue, maybe top-10 good itself now, will be in the same position in 2025, when it could be a top-five sort of preseason team and now will have a really challenging true road game to push it.

These things are hard to schedule, because the schools and coaches that see the big picture and are willing to play on someone else’s home floor, they’re not the majority. There are still going to be those who sign up for made-for-television events, but those contests are getting pushed more toward neutral sites and interest in multi-team events in November or December seems to be at a crossroads. Arkansas pulled out of the San Diego event for that reason: John Calipari doesn’t like them. With revenue-sharing now upon us, the days of people rushing to give up home games for any reason may be dwindling.

For Purdue, scheduling is tricky, now probably more than ever. It was just a few years ago that its rotations in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge and Gavitt Games, its MTE and the annual Crossroads Classic sort of took care of the basic framework of strong pre-conference schedules every year.

Now, those yearly series are gone for good until TV comes up with something else, and the Indy Classic is not completely in Purdue’s hands.

It’s going to be a challenge lining up these premier games prior to Big Ten play, but in the short terms, these Alabama and Marquette home-and-homes seem to be about as well as you can do.

Again, all those schools and coaches deserve credit for not ducking anyone. The Big 12 just showed everybody you can rig the NET by stomping Twinkies same as you can by swimming with sharks.

ON COLLEGE FOOTBALL CAMPS

Right now, Purdue and scores of other schools are hosting their camps, a tradition of summer, hundreds of players on the same field, many of them trying to punch way above their weight class and most of their mothers sitting on the hot turf reading books while Dad films his kid’s every rep on an overheating iPhone. Coaches are interacting with everyone but some way more than others. There’s a piece of paper in every staff member’s hand splitting the possible dudes from the presumed duds.

I don’t know how important camps really are anymore, because as has been well documented, high school recruiting remains important, but it’s less important than ever. Those summer camp offers, they’re often wiggle-room offers. No one ought to want to trade their winter wiggle room for summer maybes.

Something to keep in mind here, too: Even when you take a high school recruit and he pans out enough to stick in your program, but is just an unexceptional ditch-digger-type, then that’s four or five years of that scholarship/salary slot that can’t be used on a transfer. It just seems like such a futile enterprise anymore.

It is worthwhile that coaches can work transfers out at these camps, but here’s what really ought to happen …

Bowling Green and Ball State, etc., ought to be getting as many of these players to their camps as possible, doing the evaluation work, then finding the diamonds and branding their schools as a stepping stone to the Big Ten or SEC. “We’ll let you play right away, show what you can do and put together tape to send to Michigan State.” For your best players, it works out and helps you recruit the next ones, same as it would be for a power school sending a player to the NFL. For those who don’t quite pan out as hoped, or who get hurt or whatever, then the MAC gets a better long-term player than it might have otherwise.

Just being real about this: Maybe this ought to be a deal where the big kids play at the big schools and the young ones play in the MAC, C-USA and Missouri Valley.

Given the lay of the land now, would that be such a bad thing, all things considered?

For the mid- and low-majors, this may be their best bet, maybe their only bet. Be smart and self-aware here, guys.

ON A BIG WHAT-IF

When Purdue opens summer workouts and practices, it will almost certainly do so with Trey Kaufman-Renn penciled in at center. That doesn’t mean he has to play like a center, but it’s the spot he’d occupy. It also wouldn’t preclude any of the other bigs on the roster — Will Berg, Caleb Furst, Raleigh Burgess — from “making a move” and changing everything.

But what if this Daniel Jacobsen comet flying overhead for USA Basketball right now keeps burning? What if he rides his momentum from Colorado Springs and whatever happens in South America straight to West Lafayette?

One of the common denominators among Purdue’s great players under Matt Painter has been international experience, whether it be Team USA or Team Canada.

One of the common denominators among Purdue’s great big men under Matt Painter, for the most part, has been being thrown onto the floor to learn and improve on the go.

Too early to be definitive on any of these newcomers, but it’s certainly something to chew on, the possibility of having another really vertical element, especially defensively at the rim, as well as a young guy whose development into something big could be accelerated by playing now.

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