Burning Questions for Purdue’s men’s hoops offseason

Coming off an appearance in the national title game, Purdue now re-tools post-Zach Edey, but with continued high hopes for next season. It starts this off-season, which should be a relatively normal one, free of transfer portal activity, NBA-decision drama, an overseas trip and such.

As Purdue begins said off-season after some much-deserved time off, here are a few burning questions for the spring and summer. Do not touch these questions because they are, in fact, burning.

THE CENTER POSITION

Understand this first: Matt Painter and staff will go into the summer with few preconceived notions. It will be up to players and their progress to answer most of these questions. Positional questions exist everywhere but point guard and shooting guard, basically.

None bigger than at center.

For the first time in practically a decade, there’s no natural handing off from one guy to the next.

It was A.J. Hammons, then Caleb Swanigan, then Isaac Haas — whichever order you want to put Swanigan and Haas in — then Matt Haarms, then Trevion Williams, then Zach Edey.

Now, we can say with pretty decent certainty who’s getting the alpha-post usage. That’s Trey Kaufman-Renn, regardless of what position he plays. Whether he’s the 5 or the 4 doesn’t change the fact he’s getting the ball.

It could be determined by whatever Caleb Furst and Will Berg show this summer.

If one of them makes a jump enough to establish themselves as a starter, maybe Kaufman-Renn stays at forward. Furst, now a senior, has started much of his Purdue career but fell mostly out of the playing rotation as the NCAA Tournament wore on, as Edey played more and more minutes.

If Furst can take advantage of his first real opportunity to be built around, used and relied upon, Purdue could have some style-of-play flexibility. Furst’s mobility, quickness and bounce give him a skill set made for pick-and-roll, especially if he can establish some rhythm and confidence as a three-point shooter, which has sort of come and gone at times in his career. The high-low possibilities between him and Kaufman-Renn could be considerable.

Defensively, Furst isn’t necessarily a drop-coverage-style big man, but is quick enough to be more aggressive guarding ball screens. Whether Purdue would change schematically remains to be seen.

Berg showed flashes. Should those flashes project over an expanded role, then the Ultimate Size Era at Purdue does not end with Edey. But there’s a huge difference between being a scout team and mop-up-minutes player and a rotation/part-of-the-plan player. Big off-season for Berg to show he can make the jump from to the other. He couldn’t have had a better practice-floor sparring partner to learn from and Purdue does have a magic touch with these guys.

Freshmen Daniel Jacobsen and Raleigh Burgess will get opportunities starting in June.

Thing here is, if Kaufman-Renn winds up playing center, then can Purdue go smaller at the 4 and try a Camden Heide or freshman Kanon Catchings there as a change-of-pace, four-out type?

No idea, as these are mere hypotheticals at this stage, but it stands to reason it could be worth a look.

WHO BECOMES BRADEN SMITH’S PnR RUNNING MATE?

Edey and Braden Smith were one of the most potent offensive tandems in college basketball this season, as Purdue incorporated more ball-screen offense. It brought out the best in both players.

Purdue can’t replace Edey in that sense, but it needs to find credible weapons to play with Smith to max out his ability and let him wheel and deal the way he did so effectively as a sophomore.

He’ll have shooters around him, but it’s the screen setter/roller that really matters. Kaufman-Renn showed some potential — check out the first Illinois game — but isn’t the most explosive guy on direct finishes. Rolling him into post-ups would be an objective, and Kaufman-Renn has more short-roll capability than Edey ever did, for whatever it’s worth.

What about Camden Heide? It may be non-traditional to use a wing in PnR, but he’s big and physical enough to set screens, athletic enough to finish in the lane and a credible pick-and-pop option from three. He elevates more than well enough to make plays on lob passes. His decision-making playing off closeouts this season was pretty good, too.

Myles Colvin? He’s probably better suited to play away from the ball in this sense.

Furst is best suited for it because he moves so well. But Purdue would need the most aggressive and assertive version of the senior, because quick decisions and contested finishes are the name of the game.

Berg? No idea. But he does move OK for a player that big. But keep in mind, Edey was the exception, not the rule. He moved in traffic — with an infinite catch radius — better than anyone you’ll see that big. Unicorn-type stuff at the college level.

IS THERE ANOTHER SUMMER BREAKOUT?

Every year, it seems like someone breaks out in the summer. Last year it was both Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Renn.

Chances are, someone pops these next few months.

Smith will be an All-America candidate next season, so maybe he’s the guy, but Purdue has basically averaged a different All-American every other year for the past decade-and-a-half. They often reveal themselves in the summers.

Historically, it’s been the off-season between Year 1 and Year 2 that leads to major steps forward. In this case, that would include Camden Heide and, ahem, Myles Colvin. Even with the frontcourt dynamics being what they are, no one on this team stands to multiply their role like Colvin has a chance to.

THE FRESHMEN MUST LEARN QUICK

There are too many of them — slated to be six of ’em — for the rookie class to not be needed in a meaningful way this season. It’s half the roster.

That makes this summer enormously important.

There are frontcourt minutes available and relatively urgent need, almost certainly, for any combination of Burgess, Jacobsen and Catchings to step right in, but an even bigger need in the backcourt, where Purdue needs a secondary ball-handler and guard depth to emerge.

That’s Gicarri Harris or CJ Cox or both. Purdue doesn’t need one of them to be Lance Jones, but it can’t have Braden Smith playing 40 minutes every game and there are no other primary ball-handler types.

The only freshman whose positional category is well stocked is Jack Benter.

THE SCHOLARSHIP CRUNCH

Purdue just played for the national title but this — this — is the topic so many people have immediately gravitated toward, seems like.

Years ago, Matt Painter essentially promised to always be aggressive with his 13 scholarships — “to do what’s best for Purdue,” as he always puts it — and along those lines, has tried to over-sign before. The nature of college sports nowadays and Purdue’s historical data have made the risk a calculated one.

Purdue’s just never gotten that one last guy to make it worthwhile.

This fall, it did, when Jacobsen reclassified from 2025, committed to the Boilermakers and ostensibly pushed a five-man class to six. And so, on paper, the program is one over for next season.

With no attrition to this point — Mason Gillis‘ and Ethan Morton‘s departures as grad transfers were already part of the equation — and no real NBA-departure possibilities, Purdue remains north of the limit heading into the summer.

This is not as urgent an issue as it may seem from the periphery; the hard deadline is the start of school in the fall.

Pushing back an incoming freshman, in theory, could be a workaround, as could someone giving up a scholarship for a year — that would be extreme and unlikely — but it should be noted that Purdue’s scholarship chart is hourglass-shaped right now, a narrowing between this big class and bigger classes to come and any spots pushed ahead would bottleneck and ripple through future classes. As of this moment, Purdue has only one 2025 scholarship to offer.

THE COACHING STAFF

With the head coaching hiring carousel dying down, it appears as if Purdue will keep its staff intact. It will, however, need to hire at least one new graduate assistant coach. Those are more important positions than people may realize.