Three Thoughts From The Weekend: The Big Ten’s Big Middle, Devin Mockobee’s importance 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 FOOTBALL AND THE ‘MANAGEABLE MIDDLE’

Broadly, all around the conference, the story of this season, aside from Ryan Day having to win the national title or else, this year in the Big Ten is about the Pac-4 being stapled onto the western flank of the Big Ten and how that affects things 1 through 18.

To me, the geographic challenges are a bigger deal for USC, Washington, Oregon and UCLA (the most competitively compromised pawn in all of this) than anyone else. The travel and time zone stuff is worse for them, and they’re all about to find out that California kids don’t want to play Minnesota, certainly not at Minnesota.

But for the prior 14 members, it does add to an already daunting competitive pile, making upward mobility realistic, but only to a point.

The non-elites in all this have to start by being better than those like them as often and consistently as possible, like what Iowa did under Kirk Ferentz and Wisconsin under Barry Alvarez in very different times. For Purdue, that means getting to a point where you are beating Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Rutgers, Maryland and UCLA more often than, with Michigan State headed that way, as well, and Iowa’s and Wisconsin’s staying power about to be pressed. Nebraska, we’ll see. For all of them this is about who can separate from the fray, if anyone can, at least enough to scratch out consistent wins.

That’s a lot of teams, I know, but that’s where you have to get wins before you can start credibly puffing your chest out and thinking about Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, USC, Penn State and probably Washington. I’m just being real here.

This is where Purdue isn’t getting credit for the really positive steps it did make last season.

You played Minnesota and kicked their faces in. You played Illinois and kicked their faces in. You played Indiana with its well-liked (I assume) coach sitting in a frying pan and won that game. Losing at Northwestern came with the Great Lake-sized asterisk of Card not playing.

Take that all in its totality and that was a solid first step, one Purdue will want to build on now.

Purdue has only three of those teams this year, though, on the schedule: Northwestern, Illinois and Indiana. Three big ones.

ON DEVIN MOCKOBEE’S SEASON

In this new era of vagabonds and NIL rentals in college football, this sure seems like Devin Mockobee‘s 17th season at Purdue now, doesn’t it? He’s been, really, the one constant, when you take into account long-timers like Gus Hartwig missing time due to injury.

Mockobee’s the player Purdue fans probably feel like they know the best, because he’s been not only on the team, but a prominent performer, for a bunch of seasons now.

This may be his most important one, not just because he’s a senior and by extension, a leader and a key stability pillar, but much more than that.

The offense has turned over around Mockobee and Hudson Card; it remains to be determined where both consistent production and big plays come from. Mockobee is a possibility to provide both, but also reliant on others for both, because the running game isn’t going to work if Purdue can’t pose clear and present dangers in the passing game and keep defenses off balance. Scheming rushing success will be a test of Graham Harrell’s chops as both an offensive designer and play-caller.

That’s kind of Football 101, but also generally more important at Purdue, which is only occasionally the more physical imposer-of-will at the line of scrimmage.

It would behoove Purdue to find different ways to get Mockobee the ball, particularly in space. Maybe he can play even more of a role in the passing game, as such easy completions — as long as they don’t come at the expense of throwing the ball downfield — can create matchups no other known commodity on this offense has shown they can yet, because everyone’s new; take protection burden off the offensive line; and maybe let the defense screw up every now and then.

That’s what Purdue had last season in Tyrone Tracy.

Now, Tracy is gone, and his early returns with the Giants validate how good and versatile a player he was at Purdue. Unless Reggie Love becomes similarly deserving of the platoon share Tracy earned last season, that’s even more of a load on Mockobee during what will be a long, toll-taking season, a season in which the Boilermakers will likely need the very best version of Mockobee to finish off a fine college career.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL’S NEWCOMERS

When Purdue resumes basketball practice today, now begin the hard times for the freshmen, the moments where acclimating to the highest, most-detailed level of basketball of your life converges with academic demands, accountability for oneself, sometimes girl trouble, occasionally homesickness, at times that professor you just don’t see eye to eye with. It’s hard. You see how many gen-pop students struggle as freshmen — perhaps you yourself did — without the demands of the public eye and coaches who just can’t for the life of them understand why you can’t be tighter guarding that freaking ball screen.

Purdue’s outcomes this season will be shaped by its returnees. But they can take the Boilermakers only so far. Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn have to come off the floor sometimes, Camden Heide will be playing a very different role and though Myles Colvin is trending well and stuff, there remains much to prove there. This isn’t last season, when Purdue returned a virtually identical cast from the year prior. Many of the faces are familiar, but this is not the same team.

Purdue may not play a freshman more than 20 minutes a game this season, for all we know on Aug. 19, but nevertheless this will be one of the more freshman-dependent teams Matt Painter has had when you really look at it closely. They need minutes from them. It needs solid play from them. They need defense, they need open shots being made and they really, really, really need rebounds.

It will need Gicarri Harris and CJ Cox and Daniel Jacobsen, et al, up to speed, confident, well-conditioned and in a good headspace, best as can be hoped anyway. It’s up to coaches and teammates to get them there, but ultimately up to the players themselves.

There don’t seem to be any wildcards remaining in this group, but college life and structure is often a differentiator in that regard.

Set those alarms and stay out of the papers, kids.

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