{"id":1867,"date":"2023-04-03T03:15:33","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T08:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/?p=1867"},"modified":"2023-04-03T03:15:33","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T08:15:33","slug":"three-thoughts-from-the-weekend-purdue-football-the-ncaa-tournament-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/three-thoughts-from-the-weekend-purdue-football-the-ncaa-tournament-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Thoughts From The Weekend: Purdue football, the NCAA Tournament and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

GoldandBlack.com\u2019s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men\u2019s basketball, recruiting or whatever else comes to mind.<\/em> In this week\u2019s edition, some thoughts on Purdue football, the Final Four and the state of college basketball officiating.<\/p>\n

ON A NEEDED FOUNDATION<\/h2>\n

Something that has jumped out to me from a distance and from what I\u2019ve been told about Purdue\u2019s new staff full of thirty-somethings: Their collective confidence and self-assuredness. It can be dangerous when coaches may not know what they don\u2019t know, but the upshot is something that has to rub off on their new team.<\/p>\n

At Purdue, there almost always has to be something that sets the Boilermakers apart and evens the playing field against more talented, and often more physical, teams, whether it\u2019s systematic, intangible or whatever. When Jeff Brohm showed up in 2017 it was creativity and the energy that staff brought out of its roster, but there was also considerable benefit in inheriting a senior class dog-tired of losing, and losing to an embarrassing extent.<\/p>\n

Ryan Walters and Co. inherit a roster that\u2019s experienced success but isn\u2019t exactly stacked with established talent. Something is going to have to make this group something more than the sum of its parts if Purdue\u2019s going to be successful against a much more difficult schedule than the one it rode to a division title last year.<\/p>\n

It stands to reason to suggest that perhaps the coaching staff\u2019s collective personality may need to be infectious enough to craft a certain attitude from this group, similar to what happened in 2017, and going back way further, 1997. Attitude is the starting point for any quick turnaround, if you ask me. This doesn\u2019t fit the profile of a \u201crebuild\u201d \u2014 Purdue just won the Big Ten West \u2014 but it will be something of a re-imagination, reinvention, re-whatever you want to call it.<\/p>\n

The Final Four (Photo: Gregory Shamus\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

ON THE NCAA TOURNAMENT<\/h2>\n

When NIL and the Transfer Era came to bear, I heard a familiar refrain: The rich get richer.<\/p>\n

Well, in some senses, yeah. The best player in the MAC very rarely is gonna stay in the MAC very long.<\/p>\n

But if this NCAA Tournament is any indication, the combination of the two sea changes has meant the opposite: The most randomized championship event in sports came down to a Final Four of a 4, two 5s and a 9. No blue-bloods, though UConn\u2019s history isn\u2019t chopped liver. There was a mid-major and a kinda-mid-major. The biggest name among the four coaches is Hurley, and he\u2019s like the third-most accomplished Hurley.<\/p>\n

Parity, brought on by the combination of the two forces mentioned above, and the programs\u2019 involved ability to manage them.<\/p>\n

Every program in America has to be on board with and on top of NIL and the transfer portal. That much is obvious.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not how Purdue intends to build a program, and contrary to popular belief, Purdue\u2019s doing a lot right as a program. People want NCAA Tournament success, I get that, but Purdue wants NCAA Tournament success, too, but it also still needs to win in November, December, January and February.<\/p>\n

Chemistry is always going to be one of Matt Painter\u2019s non-negotiables when it comes to taking on transfers and managing a locker room in which players might be making more money than many of the adult professionals, maybe even coaches, around them.<\/p>\n

Finding that right guy who\u2019s both good enough, getable and sufficiently low-maintenance, that\u2019s going to be a challenge, but a challenge Purdue\u2019s going to face time and again from here on out.<\/p>\n

Refs who are probably doing a great job and are being unfairly indicted by us using their photo here. Sorry. (Photo: Gregory Shamus\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

ON THE STATE OF OFFICIATING<\/h2>\n

Hey, I don\u2019t know if you guys have noticed or not, but college basketball has a bit of what you might call an officiating problem, as some of this weekend\u2019s Final Four games reflected.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s games were one thing, especially Connecticut and Miami; but the women\u2019s games were a whole other level of awful. The good news there is that the LSU-Iowa title game and the eyeballs Caitlyn Clark brought to it shined a light on just how terrible the women\u2019s game has always been officiated.<\/p>\n

NCAA membership and its many committees need to sit down this summer and decide whether or not they want to be serious about this issue while they count their football money and wait for the feds to somehow fix all the problems they themselves created related to NIL.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written here before about some officials working way too many games and the fatigue and preparation concerns that come with it. The NCAA doesn\u2019t just need better officials; it needs more of them across both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s games. No one\u2019s going to want to take on the coat of doing away with the use of independent contractors and paying \u2014 and training \u2014 officials as NCAA or conference employees. Hell, the NFL doesn\u2019t even do that. But maybe that\u2019s where a discussion should start.<\/p>\n

There, and with the concept of accountability<\/em>. Now, there is very little front-facing accountability. Every week, conferences \u2018fess up privately to coaches about how much the refs messed up. Only occassionally and in extreme cases is anything made public. When Purdue got cheated at Northwestern, nothing was said. It took egregiously bad officiating literally costing Rutgers a win at Ohio State \u2014 and maybe months later, an NCAA Tournament bid (you never know) \u2014 for the Big Ten to say something.<\/p>\n

Coaches and players have to answer for their performances every time out, but officials can have just as much say in outcomes, yet in the rare instance where a pool reporter can confront them after a gamw, NCAA policy allows for them to merely explain rules then take one follow-up question. <\/p>\n

Maybe conferences should make their evaluations public the way AP poll voters<\/a><\/strong> publish their ballots. Maybe post-game coddling should be done away with.<\/p>\n

Transparency never hurt anybody.<\/p>\n

The post Three Thoughts From The Weekend: Purdue football, the NCAA Tournament and more<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GoldandBlack.com\u2019s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}