Recruiting News and Notes

An update on Purdue football and men’s basketball as of the last whole week of July.

PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING​

• It’s time to start booking visits. Cam Williams is on the books for September. We assume Quinn Costello will visit, but they’ll control that information until they are ready to make their list-cut announcement. Jacob Webber is going to visit, which won’t be all that hard once he relocates to LaLumiere. That’s going to absolutely be one to watch in the 2026 class. Don’t know if they will or not, but Purdue can get him.

I don’t know if any of the 2026s who made junior-year officials return for additional officials, but Junior County did say he’d be doing Zoom meetings with Purdue, at least, so I’m not players taking multiple officials is going to be a thing anymore if it ever was.

• If any dominoes are going to fall any time soon, the likeliest possibility would seem to be Jamyn Sondrup, a long-time Purdue priority who seems focused on the Boilermakers and Washington. Purdue has been in a great spot there and he sure seemed primed for a decision — and the folks around him on board with it — in Augusta earlier this month. He is an absolute priority for Purdue. Matt Painter made three in-home visits to our knowledge in the spring: Trey Thompson, County and Sondrup. That speaks to priority.

• It is still going to be a tall order to pull him away from Texas, but don’t dismiss Purdue’s chances with Bo Ogden. Texas, Purdue and Tennessee are probably the big three there, and Ogden is one who recognized a great fit at Purdue right away and that hasn’t changed. Texas made its coaching change at an opportune time in his recruitment but there were indications he wouldn’t have gone there had perpetually hot-seated Rodney Terry been retained.

More: Bo Ogden names top six

PURDUE BASKETBALL​

• Omer Mayer has his visa and arrives in Indiana on Saturday. Hard to imagine him taking part in a meaningful way during Purdue’s Sunday practice. After that there are only three more practices left during the summer session.

But, and this is important: Every player is allowed eight weeks of practice for the summer. It’s not an aggregate thing, but an individual thing, so since Oscar Cluff and Mayer weren’t on campus much of the summer, they will stay in August after teammates “leave” and get two weeks of hands-on coaching with Purdue’s staff, kind of a training camp of sorts. Understand that the biggest thing here is learning, whether it’s the playbook, the terminology, the little details of how Purdue does things.

That then can be applied in the fall when limited practice resumes in advance of preseason practice practice beginning in October.

• Robbie Hummel has signed on to do NBA games for NBC as part of its package, but will continue to do college games in some form. It would stand to reason to think he’d still be part of Team Peacock, but we don’t know details.

Notable: The NBC NBA deal does have a trickle-down effect on Big Ten scheduling, because last year games were sometimes played on a short turn just because Peacock needed a Tuesday night slot filled. With NBA games on its slate now, there could be more flexibility. Peacock had a ton of Tuesdays last season. That may get spread out more this season. (BN)

PURDUE FOOTBALL​

• Barry Odom said on Indy radio recently: “I do feel strongly that we have multiple quarterbacks that can play winning football in the Big Ten Conference. I think it’s going to take more than one guy to get that done this year, for a number of reasons.”

Look: Ryan Browne was brought back after spring football for a reason: The QB play in the spring failed to inspire. This is Browne’s job to lose. He’s the guy. I think perhaps Odom is just letting the QB’s know they all need to have the mind-set to be ready to play at all times. We shall see.

• Players work out today and Friday. Then, they are off July 26-29. They all report back July 30 for a 4:30 p.m. team meeting. Practice No. 1 is July 31. (TD)

PURDUE FOOTBALL RECRUTING​

Purdue saw its top 2026 commit bolt last night, as four-star defensive lineman Josiah Hope announced that he had flipped his commitment from Purdue to Louisville. The move comes just over a month after Hope flipped from Louisville to Purdue, as the Boilermakers pushed to lure a top target away from their former head coach, Jeff Brohm. There had been smoke revolving around a “re-flip” by Hope for several weeks before he made it official on Wednesday night. The move was not much of a surprise, although the timeline for the decision was a mystery until last night. The belief is that Hope’s flip back to the Cardinals was not an issue of money, rather a change of heart.

2027 four-star quarterback Ben Musser announced his top four schools earlier this week, which included the Boilermakers, as well as Virginia Tech, Vanderbilt and Cincinnati. The Georgia native took an unofficial visit to West Lafayette back in June and was initially offered by quarterbacks coach Darin Hinshaw back in April. Purdue is firmly in the mix for the dual-threat signal caller out of the Peach State, who has exuded playmaking ability with his legs and his arm for Prince Avenue Christian, having 1,472 passing yards and 15 touchdowns through the air, along with 768 yards and eight scores on the ground. Musser fits the prototype of what the Boilermakers want at the position and is a real option to become the first commit in the 2027 cycle for the program.

As far as the 2026 class is concerned, Purdue has offers out to a trio of defensive backs. We have discussed True North Classical Academy (Fla.) teammates Camaul King (three-star safety) and Dominic Turnbull (three-star cornerback) as both were offered by Purdue last week and are trending toward being two of the biggest early in-season visitors this fall. Turnbull is likely to take an unofficial visit, with a potential follow-up official visit coming shortly after, while King is lining up his official visit to campus.

Another name was added into the mix yesterday, three-star Fort Bend Travis (Tx.) safety and Northwestern commit Davis Kinney. Kinney pledged to the Wildcats in early June, but is now firmly on the board for the Boilermakers, who are still looking to add multiple defensive backs in the class in the fallout of Jett Goldsberry (Ole Miss) and Vincent Smith (West Virginia) heading elsewhere. (DJ)