BOILING OVER: Football, basketball recruiting nuggets and more

Welcome to “BOILING OVER,” GoldandBlack.com’s weekly information clearinghouse, a spot for assorted bits of Purdue news, analysis and so on and so forth, intended for GoldandBlack.com members and GoldandBlack.com members only.

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PURDUE FOOTBALL RECRUITING

• Purdue suffered a third de-commit from its Class of 2024 on Tuesday when DB Jo’Ziah Edmond walked away from his pledge. He had received an offer from Michigan the day before. The offer from the Wolverines was triggered when Michigan saw CB target Aaron Scott pledge to Ohio State on July 30. The Wolverines pivoted and went after Edmond.

Earlier, Purdue saw WR Mason Dossett (Baylor) and TE Eric Karner (Texas A&M) de-commit.

• Purdue had TE Tayvion Galloway in for an unofficial visit last weekend, the second junket to West Lafayette for the four-star Ohio prospect who was committed to LSU at one time. A decision from Galloway–who also is considering Miami (Fla.) and UCF–isn’t imminent, but Purdue feels like it’s in a good spot. What’s Purdue’s Plan B if it doesn’t land Galloway? It’s staying on some other TE targets who visited campus earlier this year.

• Touted 2025 Ohio QB Ryan Montgomery was on campus last weekend. He has a connection to Purdue, as his mother’s father got a master’s from Purdue. Something else perhaps working in Purdue’s favor with the four-star QB: home state Ohio State already has a commitment from a 2025 quarterback in Tavien St. Clair. I’m told it’s highly unlikely Montgomery would go to a two QB class at any school. He has myriad offers from the likes of Penn State, Georgia, Notre Dame, Michigan, in addition to Purdue.

• You no doubt saw on social media on Tuesday, August 1st, that official offers to 2024 recruits were distributed. The Tweets rolled out. Tuesday also marked the first day staffs could communicate with 2025 recruits.

PURDUE FOOTBALL

• Work rolls on at Ross-Ade Stadium, as crews are now hammering away 24 hours-a-day. Joe Tiller will be honored with a plaque at the entrance of the tunnel facing the Kozuch Football Performance Complex. Donors to the Tiller Tunnel project, as well as former Tiller players, also will be honored at the entrance of the tunnel on plaques. Look for more detail on Tiller Tunnel project in a coming story.

Plans are to dedicate the tunnel when Purdue plays Illinois for Homecoming on Sept. 30. Shaun Phillips will be the game captain that day. Many other former players are expected to return. And 28 members of the Tiller family, including Arnette Tiller (Joe’s wife), are expected to be back, too. Also: Drew Brees is making every effort to work his schedule to be back, as well, as he and wife Brittany led the campaign to fund Tiller Tunnel by matching donations.

• Purdue is planning to practice at 10:30 a.m. during the season. Under Jeff Brohm, the program didn’t begin practices in-season until late in the afternoon.

• There is a growing buzz around true freshmen WRs Luke Jones and Arhmad Branch. Jones is a walk-on who is the younger brother of Charlie. Branch is a freaky athlete from the St. Louis area who was a late add to the 2024 class.

• Reminder: Training camp practices are not open to the public. The media is allowed access for the first few periods of each practice, then is asked to leave. Interviews take place post-practice. The last camp practice is Aug. 24.

• Jessica Lipsett is serving as an interim replacement for Doug Boersma, Purdue’s senior associate athletics director for performance and sports medicine who passed away suddenly in July. Lipsett is a Director of Athletic Training and Physical Therapy for women’s basketball and men’s golf. Purdue will conduct a nation-wide search for Boersma’s replacement. Lispett also could be a candidate.

PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING

August is going to be basically dead from a recruiting perspective, barring any spur-of-the-moment decisions from years-long target, but come September, the end game for some of these recruitments nears.

Purdue, we think, has Travis Perry and Gicarri Harris lined up for official visits the first two weekends of next month. Both took junior year officials, previously. Interesting deal because both guards have to be nearing decisions by that point, especially interesting for Harris, whose stated plan has been to visit a bunch of other people before/instead of Purdue, since he’s been there already and knows everything he needs to know. The writing is on the wall that that one is just about on the board, but he still needs to say it out loud.

Perry, a bunch of signs point to Purdue being in the pole position there, too. At least one staff recruiting him is hoping the Boilermakers deter him by taking someone — anyone, not specific to Harris — first, though as we’ve told you, if Purdue can get both, they’re taking both. Michigan, Cincinnati and Western Kentucky are others supposedly in the picture.

Commitments Jack Benter, Raleigh Burgess and Kanon Catchings are all officially visiting between those two weekends also.

Not aware of any junior officials booked at this point, as Purdue’s tight on scholarships in that class. We don’t expect Trent Sisley to officially visit but he’ll unofficially visit for a practice come October, or so is the plan. Purdue will surely see if it can get officials from Jalen Haralson and Malachi Moreno, and maybe some of these other guys like Eric Reibe and some others. (BN)

PURDUE BASKETBALL

• P.J. Thompson on Zach Edey and what other ways they can use him: “When he was deciding to come back to Purdue, he texted me right away wanting a plan, like, ‘How can we get better? This is what I learned from the NBA. How can we incorporate it?’ It’s not as simple as him just shooting jump shots. He said, ‘I don’t need to shoot jump shots to come back to Purdue. But can I make my footwork better? Can I make my ball-handling better? He gave me a list of things and since he was with the World Cup team (allowing coaches to work players out when they otherwise wouldn’t be allowed to) we were able to work on things. His footwork has gotten better, ball-handling, just him being comfortable on the perimeter and not just running to the block. His comfort zone is being on the block, but him being able to do more stuff on the perimeter, it makes defenses do things a different way. Now they have to worry more about him rolling to the basket and all the opportunities that creates for others, as well as him diving and scoring or diving and sealing. We’ll use him in different ways, but he’s really gotten better.”

We’ll have more on Thompson sometime next week, but to repeat what we have reported already: He’s now running the offense and will be calling plays this season. Terry Johnson is working with the defense along with Paul Lusk.

• Best guess for a starting five in Europe: Caleb Furst, Trey Kaufman-Renn, Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Lance Jones. But Purdue will probably mess around with a few different groupings.

• Reviews on these FIBA balls Purdue is practicing with and will play with in Europe have not been positive. We’ll see how they shoot over there. Didn’t affect Loyer at practice yesterday, as he made damn near every shot he took. (BN)

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