Express Word: Barry Odom’s Tack and more

The Express Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, we discuss Purdue football’s public face, basketball and more.

ON PURDUE FOOTBALL’S PUBLIC FACE

There’s not much body of work yet to evaluate Barry Odom on, but with any new coach, optics and messaging matter. These are in some ways political jobs, too, and the head coach sets the tone.

That said, peoples’ ears should perk up every time a head coach deflects credit for things, as Odom has done several times since the Ball State opener. Three of Purdue’s four coaches since Joe Tiller needed credit for everything whether they showed it publicly or not. The other: There was nothing to credit.

We’ll see how things are if Purdue has success, but I’m guessing what you see is what you get with the Boilermakers’ new coach. Basketball is a different sport and job entirely but Matt Painter is the gold standard for how coaches should present themselves publicly.

This is an era of provocateurs and the bro generation taking over college football, but at Purdue, Odom seems unapologetically and excitedly, well, boring. Purdue needed boring, to be honest. Boring is stable, as long as the right things are being done outside public view. I say that as a blowhard who takes tremendous enjoyment from making fun of college football coaches’ god complexes and the Pentagons they build around themselves.

Boring is fine. Boring works in West Lafayette, Ind.

Talking about “process” can sound boring, but is 100-percent the message, the brand Purdue should be portraying right now, even if it’s become a bit of a cliché. Process wins. Process builds programs. Skipping steps, freaking out over outcomes and worrying about stuff that doesn’t matter do the opposite. Purdue’s been hit in the face with reminders on all those fronts in its modern football era, and though it’s early, Odom looks like a guy wired to stop that cycle.

If Purdue football is going to become the serious organization it hasn’t been for years now, even when it was winning, it is about process.

A KEY ELEMENT TO PROGRAM BUILDING

Purdue’s basketball program has reached rare air in the college basketball world by zigging in a number of ways while others zag.

They’re not alone in not building through the portal, but they haven’t. They’re not alone in recruiting to fat checks, but they haven’t. They’ve mostly done things the same way they did before the world turned upside down, and the pillars of that approach won’t change.

One of them: Redshirting.

The practice has never really been about stashing players who aren’t good enough, but rather maximizing assets by redshirting those who are good enough if the Year 1 pay-off doesn’t seem even with potential Years 2-5 pay-off. It’s peak Painter pragmatism that has really begun to pay off the past few season.

Think about how well this is going to break for Trey Kaufman-Renn, who improved immensely in his redshirt while side-stepping a year of Zach Edey opportunity consumption.

Think about what an unfortunate lucky break it’s going to turn out to be for Daniel Jacobsen. He didn’t redshirt by choice, but he needed to redshirt. Purdue couldn’t even consider the option before the injury and might have won another game or two had it not been forced on it, but the long-term pay-off, starting now, is going to be considerable.

Jack Benter is going to be a key piece of Purdue’s future. There was never any question he’d do anything last season beside redshirt, but you’ll see a player this season who’s much better off and much readier to contribute than he’d have been otherwise. And now his window is going to align better with creases of opportunity like the one that exists now at forward.

The goal in college basketball is to be old and try to remain so. There’s more than one way to do it and Purdue’s way is working.

The most important: Players understanding that.

ON PURDUE THREE-POINT SHOOTING

Is Purdue a “big man” school as people perceive it?

Sure.

But the reality is that it’s best described broadly as an “offense” school.

Jacob Webber’s commit brings to mind that Purdue has been an elite three-point shooting school for a decade now. It’s a symbiotic relationship with the bigs, of course, but it is not the big men who have made the program great, but rather the big men’s marriage with the floor-spacers around them.

The past nine years years, Purdue has been top-10 nationally in three-point percentage four times, top 20 five times. And one of those non-top-10 years, it was three-point shooting virtually by itself that brought Purdue to within an eyelash of the Final Four.

Three-point shooting all throughout basketball is the great equalizer; at Purdue it’s been the great escalator.

Credit Painter for adapting from the scratch-and-claw, grab-and-hold, win-in-the-50s days and for exploiting a blind spot in his peers.

Why didn’t Ryan Cline or Dakota Mathias have national offers? How does Carsen Edwards have offers dry up on him late in the recruiting process? Why didn’t Fletcher Loyer have 30 power offers? What was Kentucky waiting to see from Jacob Webber that it hadn’t already?

Purdue has spent a decade now beating schools that’ll take a run-and-jump specimen over a slow marksman nine times out of 10. It’s because Purdue understands that a three-pointer is worth 50 percent more than a dunk and that threes affect games more than the alternative.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• One horrific loss does not mean Bill Belichick at North Carolina is a failed state, but it is a glaring reminder that college football and the NFL are two very different sports. UNC has been one of the forerunners in leveraging NFL contacts to evaluate transfers, which is just a beyond-flawed approach. These are kids, not professionals, and coaching kids is a hundred times different from coaching professionals.

For one thing, style of offense is different and by extension, defense must be. Hey, did you guys know they run spread offense in college football? North Carolina didn’t seem to.

I get what UNC is trying to do here, I guess. College football is now about NFL-style program-building. But you still have to know your players to be able to coach them, know how to teach a different way and relate to people you’ve never had to relate to before and most importantly, understand the game you’re coaching. No one would ever suggest Bill Freaking Belichick doesn’t understand football, but this type of football is different. This isn’t Bill Parcells’ game anymore at any level.

Maybe North Carolina’s Trustees should have grasped that too before forcing an impulse hire on their athletic department. Another reminder: Leave sports to the sports people.

• The data might have suggested otherwise, but I thought Purdue’s tackling was fine vs. Ball State.

Missed sacks are never ideal, but if they knock an offense out of its wants and desires, that’s not a negative play. It’s not the impact play it could have been, but as long as all hell doesn’t break loose after, that’s a net positive.

Missed tackles are never ideal, but if they’re cleaned up swiftly, what’s that extra yard or two in the grand scheme? The missed tackle that springs a big play is the one that kills you.

But the most important: If you’re playing fast and aggressive, you are going to miss tackles. That Purdue missed tackles because it was playing fast and aggressive, I think you take that every day of the week for an opener. This was the first game, the ground floor, and in that context, Purdue was fine.