Three Thoughts From The Weekend: Purdue’s leadership, impact freshmen 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.

ON PURDUE STARTING PRACTICE

There’s going to be a ton of news from Purdue’s summer practices, lots of personnel decisions to be made, lots of interesting newcomers, lots of improvements to track and lots of new Xs and Os.

But broadly, this is where expectation gets set.

Every year, when a team does well, players so often refer back to the summer and what transpired. It’s now summer, time for leadership to assert itself and for the sort of drive that propelled Purdue to new heights to be passed down.

That might be the single most important element for Purdue right now, that the bar be raised and newcomers and younger returnees indoctrinated into it. The two instances under Matt Painter in which the program slipped (though not for long), leadership was the banana peel.

That won’t happen now.

Braden Smith is the sort of force of will that should drag others up to his competitive level whether it’s natural for them or not. Fletcher Loyer is going to be right there with him.

And Trey Kaufman-Renn‘s energy and effort might be the one part of Zach Edey he can replace.

Oh, and if Purdue has ever had a player who can make leadership into an academic pursuit, this is the guy. It’s already bouncing around that deep mind of his.

Purdue’s going to be fine here as it begins a summer with the right taste in its mouth and wanting more of it.

ON DANIEL JACOBSEN

I’m going to keep banging this drum: Purdue needs to get Daniel Jacobsen on the floor now. He is the best prospect among the incoming freshmen — and that was true before Kanon Catchings exited the class — and a player who might be playing basketball for a long, long time.

In the short term, accelerating his development via experience is critical. He’s probably going to be Purdue’s best shot-blocker right now. Purdue will want some of its traditional uncommon size to emerge at center, to complement Trey Kaufman-Renn and sometimes play next to him. That’s up to Will Berg and Jacobsen.

Berg has a real opportunity here, for sure, but Jacobsen is top of mind right now because of his play in Buenos Aires. And Berg may not have the same shot-blocking potential.

But the bigger picture here is getting Jacobsen on the right trajectory, because the player I just watched on YouTube is a player who’d already be on draft boards if he was from the Eastern Bloc and not the Upper Midwest, if his name were Jacobsenski or Jacobsenovic. I’m kidding, kind of.

He hasn’t even practiced at Purdue yet, but if you’re taking bets on the Boilermakers’ next great big man, you might already have your answer.

ON STICKING TO ONE’S WAYS

Make no mistake here, folks: The up-and-down left-and-right saga that was Kanon Catchings‘ commitment to Purdue could have been resolved at the last second by Purdue just saying all the right things to placate a fretting young man. How do I know this? Because this wasn’t the first time Catchings decided he wasn’t coming to Purdue. The other times, those decisions just vanished into the ether like they’d never happened.

But that pattern, that was precisely the reason Matt Painter quickly granted Catchings’ request to be cut loose from his papers with Purdue. Once something has happened over and over again, chances are it’s not just going to stop.

It’s a tough deal for both sides. Catchings is a real talent, but there were landmines here for certain.

Couple months ago, Overtime Elite was playing games at Broad Ripple High School and even as the story around Catchings was those around him saying he was growing up and developing a more level head, there he was on his team’s bench at the end of a one-sided loss, sitting by himself, isolated, disengaged from his team, leaning toward the locker room before the game had even finished. I’ve personally seen him mouth off to more refs and coaches than any other recruit I’ve ever observed. It’s a sort of emotional impulsiveness that has been an odd dichotomy with a bit of an introverted individual.

It’s not a fatal character flaw or me trashing the kid, but rather a reminder that these are human beings, not commodities, even though the basketball machine sometimes gets the two confused.

Purdue was going to play Catchings this season, most likely, but would not seem to have an urgent, urgent need for his positional category. To become more than just a contributor, he was going to have to pass over a few guys who just helped Purdue play for a national title. If things didn’t work out the way the player might prefer, there’s no telling how he might have handle the sort of situation Myles Colvin just navigated as a freshman, and the risk there is Painter’s great fear: The unhappy player at the end of the bench taxing everyone else’s spirit. That was the worst case scenario and a totally speculative projection, but one of Painter’s gifts as a coach is getting out in front of problems and letting the recruiting process — which sometime butts right up to enrollment — filter some of those things out.

You need talent to win. Talents like Catchings don’t grow on trees.

But the balance between talent and culture has been a line Purdue has walked like a ballerina lately, which is to say perfectly.

Here’s hoping this works out for Catchings. He’s a good person from a great family, who just has some growing up to do to cash in on his massive talent.

As for Purdue, it will be fine.

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