Express Word: Basketball ceiling, Edey and more

The Weekly Word is

Gold and Black Express’s opinion column, written by Brian Neubert written before Thursday’s 22-point win at Minnesota. In this week’s edition, we discuss Purdue basketball’s Big Ten outlook, Boilermaker football and more.

PURDUE BASKETBALL SITTING PRETTY

As Purdue heads to Minnesota for one of those games that’ll cost you a Big Ten title more than they’ll win you one, it holds pole position in the conference race, even if it comes with a hint of tenuousness.

Look around college basketball and you will see how hard winning is, particularly in conference play. Look around the Big Ten — a pile of lobsters climbing over each other in their tank — and you’ll see how hard winning is.

Purdue’s now 5-1 in Big Ten play and four of those six games were essentially coin flips at the end. They came up heads for the Boilermakers three of the four times, but the point there is that unless you’re Wisconsin and made some sort of deal with some unholy being to win last year’s Big Ten title, coin flips generally even out.

Now, remember, Purdue is done with Nebraska (who took the Boilermakers to overtime, improbably) and will be done with Minnesota after tomorrow night. Those two teams are the closest thing to free passes this league has to offer, and I’ll remind you again that Purdue needed five extra minutes to beat Nebraska on the road last month.

Every game from here on out might be similar to those four games decided by one play here, one play there, by either a Fletcher Loyer shot, a Zach Edey shot or a Cam Spencer shot.

Again, things tend to balance out.

Last year’s team played a lot of games closer than they should have been, and Ron Harper Jr., Rob Phinisee, Tyson Walker and Chucky Hepburn happened. Purdue had to be better last season to avoid tempting fate and living dangerously the way it did a year ago, costing itself a banner and maybe more.

Here’s the difference: Last year’s team never reached its ceiling, even when it was winning big to start the season. This team, you wonder how much higher the ceiling is. So much has unfolded in best-case-scenario fashion.

Yeah, this guy or that guy can play better off the bench, and this guy and that guy can shoot better from three and all that, but two weeks ago, Purdue’s up-side lied in its shooting percentages, a worm that seems to have turned now, maybe sustainably.

Purdue has to show it can do a better job defensively on playmaking scoring guards and they would be well-served to do a better job corralling long defensive rebounds, but those are different deals from jump-shooting, because the latter is a strength that just wasn’t for a while. It was likely to normalize and has.

All these games from here on out are gonna require some real gumption to win, and when Purdue just played close to what I’d few as its ceiling a couple times and needed late daggers to survive, that’s a bit foreboding in terms of what’s to come.

It’s going to be a season full of 50/50 games for everybody vying for a Big Ten title and whoever wins the most ‘moments’ may win the league. So far, those teams have been Purdue and Rutgers.

Purdue’s so far ahead of where it should be that it would be a shame to again come this far and come away without a title to show for it. And yes, I know it’s only January, but that’s how much the story of this whole season has changed.

It’s going to come down to so many more of these moments and time will tell whether Purdue can keep making that coin keep coming up heads. There’s absolutely no reason to doubt them, as this season has reminded time and time again, and this particular Purdue team has probably sweet-talked the basketball gods more than most by at least trying to play the game the right way every time out.

But sometimes it also just comes down to luck here and there, and that’s never an infinite resource.

A BIG DECISION A FEW MONTHS AWAY

So this isn’t a story yet, but it will be before long.

I don’t know what Zach Edey’s plans are for his life. I don’t know what his academic ambitions at Purdue are. And I don’t know how much better he can get at the college level. I don’t know to what extent money drives him.

But with the NBA now being a healthy Dolorean ride away from the salad days for players like him, one has to wonder about whether or not Purdue can return this team virtually intact next season, the All-American-to-be center included.

NIL has changed these decisions. Look around the Big Ten. Hunter Dickinson and Trayce Jackson-Davis are the two best examples of fringe draft picks who’d have gone pro a few years ago, with little else to do from an individual perspective at the college level. They may or may not have made it, but it would have been their time.

Now, they’re back in college, quite possibly — or likely — making more money as “amateurs” than they would in the G-League or overseas.

It will fundamentally change college basketball into a game played more by grown men than kids and you can feel about that however you will, but what’s to say next year isn’t finally Purdue’s turn to benefit from this stuff instead of being the victim of it? The COVID year last year cost the Boilermakers a Big Ten title, as did other things, but that was one of them.

Now, what’s to say that Edey doesn’t see a more lucrative situation for himself back at Purdue next season? Edey would be a niche prospect for the NBA, and one that not every franchise would go for. He’d have to earn his place, and probably not via the path of least resistance. Those G-League busses can’t be that comfortable and those overseas flights are long for anyone, let alone someone of such proportions. I don’t know how well pro basketball in Canada pays, but chances are, Edey’s NIL earnings as Preseason Player-of-the-Year next season would stack up.

Sometimes, players are just ready for something else, ready to move on. And who can blame them when they are? It’s their lives and you only get so many years to play and earn, though the earning part has already begun for players like Edey. Yes, Edey’s developmental arrows are all still pointing up, but so are those of most players who turn pro. I have no idea how Edey even views himself in this regard. Can Edey play in the Modern NBA? Yeah, maybe. The better question is whether he’d get his best shot.

Historically the calculus for players with these options and these decisions to make has boiled down to money, though. And money is no longer the dealmaker it always has been.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the fact that Purdue, for example, is about to play its third game in the span of six days tomorrow night at Minnesota, a year after that unreasonable stretch of games that culminated in that running-on-fumes loss at Michigan, the beneficiary of its own COVID issues earlier in the season.

I don’t like the fact that Michigan State just did the same, playing three games in less than a week.

I don’t like the fact that teams that are part of an increasingly national basketball conference play 9 p.m. Wednesday night games in Lincoln, Neb., on a school night then fly back to New Jersey or D.C. that night. I don’t know about you, but if college kids are gonna stumble back into their apartments at 5 a.m., they should at least have some real memories — or maybe no memory at all — to show for it.

I don’t like the fact that TV calls all the shots here, with no apparent human element scanning the whole thing and working to filter out raw deals and minimizing the competitive ramifications of this stuff. It’s not just a team’s single-play draws anymore that hold championship implications, but the actual structuring of the schedule, too, the sort of X-factors that cheapens a regular season title already watered down by unbalanced schedules and the second “championship” that can come from the postseason tournament.

I know there’s no going back now. Revenue college sports sold itself to television for good years back, for better and worse. I mean, these problems come as the counterbalance to coast-to-coast exposure and piles and piles of football money. But a 20-game schedule in the Big Ten is being crammed into way too short a window. NCAA-mandated days off are noble and necessary, and such things shouldn’t become as problematic as they are right now as teams bounce from one game to the next, stepping off one charter flight and onto another.

Again, there’s no real answer here most likely, and the Big Ten’s not going to cut back its regular season schedule or nix the Big Ten Tournament, but as the conference takes on new leadership and begins working with new media partners, here’s hoping for the game’s sake that this sort of thing will be a topic of discussion, aligning with the wholesale schedule reboot that’ll have to come with the additions of UCLA and USC.

• Purdue football seems to be about done with the portal for this window, but when the next one opens, or in these next few weeks before February, I think it goes without saying that if this staff is going to throw the ball as much as it seems to intend to, wide receiver is an absolute must, like the kind of must that could influence the Boilermakers’ record next season. Looking at that schedule, you’d better be able to make some plays on offense …

• Something to watch here: New offensive line coach Matt Mattox. For years now, Purdue has needed something to set itself apart with offensive line recruits. A dynamic recruiter would have been a great start. Purdue’s not had one at that position since Danny Hope forever ago.

I don’t know Mattox and I don’t know if there’s relevant context of from UTSA but Purdue could really use a personality at that position. Purdue could use personality at every position, but especially that one.