Weekly Word: Defense moving back in; Peacock and more
The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s Weekly Word, we discuss Purdue basketball’s defensive trajectory, football and more.
ON PURDUE AND DEFENSIVE IMPROVEMENT
For years, around this time of year, Matt Painter’s pointed to defense as an anticipated strength for his team during the season to come. Sometimes, it’s realistic. Sometimes, he’s just wishing upon a star. Other times he’s probably probably talking to his team through the media, like two seasons ago when he and his staff basically publicly pled with their best players to buy in on D. (Didn’t work.)
This year, while Painter hasn’t yet gone out of his way to predict looming dominance on defense, he does have every reason to expect even more after last year’s leap forward, brought upon by some personnel comings and goings, a more attentive roster, staff continuity and Zach Edey‘s abrupt transformation into Thanos.
Does Purdue have ideal personnel to just overwhelm people the way some of Painter’s earlier teams sometimes could? No, but basketball has changed anyway from those days and Purdue has changed considerably along with it.
The Boilermaker coach would never say this out loud or might not even agree, but Purdue is an offensive program now, has been for the better part of a decade. It used to be a rock-throwing, shirt-grabbing program that built teams to win monster-truck-show Big Ten basketball, one that wanted to punch Michigan State in the teeth before the Spartans could hit you in the kidney.
Anyway, what Purdue has now is a group that should be the best Purdue has had being what Purdue is now — helping, containing, rebounding, stealing possessions and building around the office building playing center. Perimeter pressure has given way to lane protection, though that’s not to say this team can’t be much more disruptive than the past few.
Purdue has experience now. It has a half dozen or so guys I’d expect to be legitimately good defensive players. In Edey, it has an elite centerpiece. It has athleticism now it didn’t have this time a year ago. Lance Jones alone is transformative. Throw in Myles Colvin‘s and Camden Heide‘s physical ability and it just screams how much more this group is capable of on D, provided the young guys don’t play young too long. The Boilermakers practiced together damn near all summer, a crash course in cohesion.
You realize Purdue was a top-25 defense nationally last season? You realize that among Big Ten teams, only Rutgers allowed fewer points per game and held opponents to a lower three-point percentage? You realize that Purdue took a huge step forward on defense with its most important and most targeted player, Edey, hardly ever having to worry about foul trouble?
Are there going to be matchups that sometimes rub Purdue raw that it will have to adjust to or just survive? Sure. Tyson Walker is still around. But Purdue was good enough on defense to be No. 1 nationally at one point last year, to unify the Big Ten championship belt and so on. Its season did not end prematurely because of defense. It ended prematurely because when given open three-pointers, those who actually wanted to shoot looked like they were trying to throw a beach ball through a swinging tire.
If Purdue just shoots badly against Fairleigh instead of horrifically, it grinds that game out and, for all we know, maybe goes to the Final Four. All I know is that every team that gets to that rare air seems to have that scare. Just have to weather it. FDU had 58 points with 1:26 to play. Purdue’s problem in that game was that it didn’t have 72 at that point.
Purdue can be better offensively this season. It’ll shoot better — and must; it’s the single-biggest key to the season, if you ask me — and benefit from experience in the backcourt and athleticism on the wing, but after improving so much on defense last season, the bigger jump might come now.
Legend.
ON PURDUE AND PEACOCK
Come for the “Alf” re-runs, stay for the Big Ten football.
Saturday, Purdue makes its debut on NBC’s streaming service, Peacock. Probably not what Big Ten programs accustomed to national TV exposure every weekend had in mind, but money talks. NBC was a member of the coalition of the willing that gave the Big Ten a billion-ish dollars for a stake in football-and-basketball live sports rights, and while that will mean the occasional big-ticket prime-time game, this weekend it just means streaming inventory. Sweet, sweet live sports. Sweet, sweet content. Suck it, Discovery+.
Anyway, college football media deals are now a proxy war for streaming competition, and so here you are, the consumer, needing to purchase more than one distribution platform to see Purdue football games and more, and bigger, basketball games than I think most realize.
It’s a bold play for NBC and those like it. Granted, live sports is absolute gold in this climate, maybe the most valuable property there is aside from maybe John Wick movies. (NBC has those too.)
But the calculus here fascinates me, how profit occurs. It’s like when the Anaheim Angels signed Albert Pujols years back. What outcomes would have made that investment worthwhile? NBC already had a college football niche with Notre Dame home games (and didn’t have to pay a dime more for this past weekend’s Ohio State game) and a piece of the NFL.
How many Peacock subscribers have to be added (and preferably stick) for these expenditures to make sense? How much viral branding punch has to come from this? How much advertising interest has to be drummed up for a platform that isn’t as much advertising driven?
How many sports people need to sign up, then get drawn in by whatever contrived cop/fireman/emergency room doc show NBC is recycling at the moment — or just forget they’ve subscribed?
I don’t know. I don’t think they know. These media entities are spending blind right now, if you ask me. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not as smart as the guys who green-lit that tragically awful and downright blasphemous “Night Court” re-boot.
Me, I’m just waiting for my boss to realize this was just my 3-D chess way of getting him to pay for me binge-watching “Yellowstone” one of these days. We’ll see what NBC gets out of this, but I’m a winner now, and the Big Ten’s laughing — just not at “Night Court” reimagined — all the way to the bank.
Purdue Flag (Photo: Chad Krockover)
RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK
• I don’t have the slightest idea if Myles Colvin is going to be ready to really star for Purdue from Day 1. There’s a lot to learn. But I do know that the other day when presented with a couple dumb questions from yours truly right here, he said all the right things. Self-awareness is king for freshmen and Colvin using the word “simple” and understanding that Edey is the planet all others orbit, that spoke volumes about the mega-talented youngster understanding that you have to fit in before you can stand out.
• Illinois is a great starting-point sort of opponent for Purdue as it looks to build some momentum under this new staff. Losing to Wisconsin is one thing when you’ve lost to them every year since the second Bush Administration.
But Illinois, Indiana, now Northwestern, that’s the ground floor, the peer programs you recruit so often against.
This is a big, big game on Saturday.
• If you are going to denounce “playing for clicks,” maybe don’t invite a TV camera in to film your denouncement, for the sake of content, Oregon. That’s what wordsmiths like me might call “dumb.”
By the way, I hate the word “content” and have always tried to avoid using it since it’s just kind of a synonym for “stuff” and borderline insulting in the way it modestly suggests people will lap up anything you slap online, but I’ve lost that battle, same way I’ve given up on blacklisting the word “portal.” Had a good run.
The post Weekly Word: Defense moving back in; Peacock and more appeared first on On3.
