Express Thoughts: Trope Season

GoldandBlack.com’s Express Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind. In this week’s edition, Purdue’s NCAA Tournament stakes, haters and tropes and more.

PURDUE’S TIME IS NOW

Welcome to Trope Season, folks.

Starting this week you will be hearing all about how Purdue can’t win in March, how it’s bound to be bounced again by some hopelessly overmatched low-major team who’ll benefit from the Boilermakers choking.

It’ll all be crap, just straight trash.

You watch how many fools put money on either Montana State or Grambling State between Wednesday night and Friday night. Watch and laugh.

There is nothing about the past that should be predictive of its future, because even though most of the faces and all of the uniforms are the same, this is an entirely different team, as we have told you all season. It is a much more mature, much more experienced and much more complete team, equipped with almost too much confidence.

Last year has nothing to do with this year. Isaac Haas’ injury has nothing to do with this year. Neither of Robbie Hummel’s injuries have anything to do with this year. The legend of Glenn Robinson’s back injury has nothing to do with this year. That game in Louisville a few years back has nothing to do with this year.

Conversely, the Virginia story has nothing to do with Purdue.

Purdue is one of the best teams in this field. It wouldn’t be outlandish to argue that it’s the best, nor would it be to make the same argument for Connecticut or even Houston.

If Purdue doesn’t turn the ball over as it did in all four of its losses this season, it can win it all. Doesn’t mean it will, but no one’s beaten it yet otherwise, and that bracket is full of those who’ve fallen at the Boilermakers’ hands.

Thursday is the media day prior to Purdue’s first-round game. It will be a day, I’ll be so bold as to say, that you will be glad to have been following us all along this season, because you will know better than to buy the storylines that’ll come from those press conferences and that open locker room.

Now, that’s to say that what the past has meant to shaping Purdue’s present, that’s a story. Otherwise, just drivel.

MAKE WAY FOR THE BAD GUY

First of all, let me preface this by saying that I fully understand that social media is not real life. Those very words are becoming my catchphrase, like something out of a Teddy Ruxpin when you pull the string.

It is more likely the meteor headed straight this way, the runaway train of human folly being steered in vain not by our best and brightest, but by our worst and loudest, a caravan of fools leading a nation of trolls, toxic button-pushing reply guys, the blissfully unaware and purposefully ignorant, the intellectually dishonest, the Barstool bros, the porno-bots and Crypto-bots and the bad actors monetizing our lowest common denominators, and on down the line. Don’t forget “Cry More” Guy and “Cope” Guy.

Those of us who have synapses firing are being dragged down by it.

That’s a very important qualifier to the point I’m about to make, because I am not basing it on a particularly credible bureau in the court of public opinion. Responding to it is just as stupid, but as I said, it can drag you down, and my job requires participation with Twitter and YouTube, mostly, on top of our message boards, though they are inhabited exclusively by the extraordinary among us, literally the best of the best.

Somehow, Purdue has become a villain of sorts in this weird, dark underworld full of bad sports-takesmanship, tribal warfare between bands of fans who aren’t seeing straight and a national sports media that capitalizes on it all to max out engagement and that sweet, sweet click revenue.

When opinions change on a nightly basis, so do realities for all those who don’t know any better or just want to be pissed off by something.

In this environment, Purdue has become a butt of many jokes due to its recent losses to double-digit seeds in the NCAA Tournament, three in as many years. That’s the deal, though. There was never any way around that. I get it. Mostly, Purdue gets it.

That was predictable.

The really weird part, though, is how Purdue has sort of been painted almost in this bad guy role.

Why? Well, in America, we — a non-specific we — tend to get tired of winners, especially those who get a lot of exposure and tend to be squeaky clean. Purdue has won a lot, but not enough in the NCAA Tournament to not get made fun of.

But anyway, Purdue gets talked about a lot, because it has again been great this season. Maybe people are sick of them, I don’t know.

But how this team has become Bane to the the college basketball idiocracy’s Gotham is just so bizarre.

How Zach Edey became that guy is just bizarre. He’s dominant in ways that people and bots who don’t understand what they’re watching can’t fathom, so they hate. Yes, he’s really big. So?

It’s just weird because there couldn’t be a more solid dude playing college basketball right now or a more solid team, with a more solid coach. This is what people are rooting against while there was a guy carrying a felony charge winning the Big Ten Tournament Sunday and teams comprised of unapologetic soldiers of fortune all over the country.

Sunday on CBS at least two of the analysts involved — Seth Davis, Jay Wright, Clark Kellogg, all smart basketball people — went so far as to say they’d be rooting for Purdue. That’s a modest breach of journalism protocol, but not human protocol, or good sense for that matter. Weird how the people who know what they’re talking about are rooting for Matt Painter and Zach Edey, yet trolls just parrot fellow trolls.

Meanwhile, keyboard cavaliers demonize Purdue like it’s Duke in the ’90s, with one big difference.

Somehow, Purdue got painted as a bad guy. Purdue is still kind of an underdog. Since when does the underdog get treated like this? You know who really makes my blood boil? That damn Jim Valvano N.C. State team and those kids who played gor Gene Hackman in that movie!

Does it matter that Purdue has gotten all this manure thrown at it? Not really. It’s just stupid.

And to the extent to which those in the locker room are conscious of it, maybe it’s time to embrace it. Mad Purdue has been the best Purdue this season. That’s the upshot of that fluky loss to Wisconsin in Minneapolis, the product of a completely unnecessary double-technical foul call and another run of untimely Purdue turnovers, not to mention a downright-weird deciding sequence in OT.

Maybe it’s time to just embrace it, for Anakin Skywalker to go full Darth Vader starting Friday night, to begin the process of triggering the college basketball reply-guy world.

I just know that I wouldn’t want to be whatever is standing between Zach Edey or Braden Smith or Mason Gillis and redemption, no matter what @douggie98765 tweeted last night or whatever some born-yesterday pundit with a sassy handle said on YouTube.

ON NEW-NESS

This is a very different Purdue team in a basketball sense, too, and that should bode well for March.

All that junk defense that has caused some problems in the past against these smaller teams, well, if you want to take your chances with Purdue’s shooting now, may the odds forever be in your favor, I guess. You’ll be more likely to get blown out than not. Preparing for Purdue’s ball-screen offense now is a very different animal, particularly on short notice.

Purdue has a great big man, a great point guard and has shot the three great all season. Unfamiliar officiating is always a wildcard, but it could help Purdue. Call it every time Edey gets fouled but also call it every time you think Edey himself fouled and see which team comes out on top there.

The Boilermakers have shown all season they can play different styles and win different ways. They can play at different speeds, they have more athletes, they have more-ball-handlers and more perimeter defenders. They’ve blown people out and they’ve won close games against good teams away from home. They’ve shown toughness, grit and with only a few exceptions, real poise.

And they are the most confident and motivated team I’ve covered.

They are set up well.