Takeaways from Saturday’s Scrimmage

Purdue held its annual Fan Day scrimmages Saturday afternoon in Mackey Arena, as the No. 1 Boilermakers staged a trio of intrasquad competitions.

PDF: Scrimmage stats

HOW MANY IS TOO MANY AND HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH

This Purdue team might — might — really push the definition of the term “problem.” Is too much of a good thing really a problem?

Purdue has more starters than it can start and more players than it can play. It’s been said a time or two over the years, but it has never been more true than right now. Gicarri Harris was Purdue’s most improved player and was outstanding this summer, backing it up Saturday with an efficient team-high 20 points, but CJ Cox was already very good and has been great lately, especially Saturday, when he went for 15 points, seven rebounds and four steals. And the “other guy” in that mix is an elite recruit and future draft pick who looked like a star on Saturday. Omer Mayer‘s going to make some mistakes, but his ability is breathtaking, as he showed in his seven-point, nine-assist afternoon Saturday.

It will be up to the player when the time comes, but it would seem wasteful for Antione West to not redshirt this season, but no one can predict the future. But Purdue has more guards as is than it can probably keep well fed, so to speak. What you don’t want to have happen is to play too many people to the benefit of none of them. It’s a real peril, as Matt Painter alludes to every time he mentions the challenges for shooters shooting well in limited minutes.

Things do work themselves out, but there’s nobody in this mix right now that’s going to just turn into a pumpkin one of these days. Last year at this time, there were several players, none of whom remain at Purdue, that you had to look long and hard at and wonder if they were really going to be sustainably reliable and in some cases, even playable.

It’s easy to say before any games have been played, but that bottom third of the roster now is as solid, relatively speaking, as the top third.

Those situations require the old Purdue Basketball buzzword: Sacrifice. The sort of sacrifice Mason Gillis made by not starting his senior year or that Fletcher Loyer has made by not being somewhere he gets 20 play calls a game for him. Or that Braden Smith made by not taking some drunken-sailor program’s barrel of play money this spring, at the expense of his career and maybe happiness.

That’s the culture Purdue has, and one that will again need to hold firm this season, guys who might be standouts at other schools have to take the term “glue guy” as a compliment here. Purdue’s connective-tissue types this season are almost ideal.

But Purdue has a lot of players to sort through and a lot of options to sort through. It has the pieces to beat you a hundred different ways, but at some point, is it better to be pre-eminent at six things or good at 30 things?

If this were the NBA and you had so many more possessions per game, you might be running weak-side ball screens to try to get CJ Cox to his pull-up jumper or running two-man-game stuff for Jack Benter as a screener or using Smith as a red herring to get Mayer into a ball screen on the opposite side. And you’d certainly be running more for Loyer. Maybe you’d be posting up your centers to make defenses respond and in Daniel Jacobsen‘s case, keep developing. You’d run plays to get Kaufman-Renn threes, which he can make.

But you can’t do everything. This has to be overwhelmingly about Smith and Kaufman-Renn and everyone playing off them.

It sure would be tempting, though, to try a bunch of different stuff, but Purdue is too good and the stakes too high to try to reinvent the wheel here.

LAST YEAR’S GAPS ARE NO MORE

This isn’t just about Purdue improving its roster, filling needs and being better top to bottom than last year, but turning last year’s open wounds into healthy muscle fiber. (Yeah, that’s right.)

Rebounding is transformative. Absolutely transformative. You’ll see, but that’s just one piece of this puzzle.

Last year, Purdue was understandably obligated to have Braden Smith on the floor virtually the entire game at point guard. Taking him out would have knee-capped the offense. Purdue needed Trey Kaufman-Renn out there as much as possible. The Boilermakers sometimes swooned when he sat.

Now, make no mistake: Those two All-Americans are Purdue’s foundation and will be relied-up accordingly. But now if Smith comes out, Omer Mayer is a legit playmaker and creator, even if Purdue has to let him play through some youthy ups and downs at times. Oscar Cluff and Daniel Jacobsen can chip in offensely, either posting up traditionally or in ball screens. Purdue had nothing up front last season to run offense through beyond TKR.

Further, Purdue’s offensive rebounding and transition offense infrastructures should yield easy points enough to insulate the Boilermakers to a decent extent to opposing runs.

JACK BENTER AND LIAM MURPHY AS 4 MEN

There was a moment during the first of the three scrimmages on which Jack Benter played off a closeout, drove off it, got all the way to the rim and finished a saucy reverse layup. Purdue could not do that last year.

There’s no sense in re-litigating Purdue’s limitations last season or piling on those who left, but defenses did not have to guard Caleb Furst with all their might, nor did they have to respect Camden Heide or Myles Colvin’s ability in the halfcourt to do much more than catch and shoot. Yes, Colvin could occasionally dribble in his mid-range pull-up but beyond that neither were great at dribbling or passing off those long closeouts or taking advantage of alleyways Kaufman-Renn’s gravity could have provided. Purdue has always coveted skill at the 4 for a reason, and “skill” means so much more than just shooting.

Seeing Benter dribble and shoot Saturday and Liam Murphy moving the ball and cutting for layups — he didn’t make any threes, but that’s the least of anyone’s concerns with him — said something about the different layers of offensive value out there now. And even with limitations, Purdue was really good offensively last season.

ABOUT TURNOVERS

All those highlight assists today were fun for the fans and good for viral content, but Purdue is too good for simplicity to not be the mandate here. There are going to be turnovers, but as is the case every year, they have to be kept to a minimum.

Basketball is supposed to be fun, and Purdue has effectively made the process of winning fun, but making things more difficult than they have to be might be quicksand for a team there should be no stopping otherwise. It was just a scrimmage, but there were moments Smith and Mayer got a bit fast and loose with the ball, as you have to live with with great players sometimes, same way you had to take the good with the bad when Carsen Edwards would uncork a 40-footer or Jaden Ivey would drive 75 miles an hour into the lane with no Plan B. Nit-picking great players is part of being great because what you do matters so much more than what anybody else.

But ball-security is a huge deal for Purdue this season as it has a chance to flip the possessions column decisively in its favor via rebounding.

Smith is going to turn the ball over. Kaufman-Renn is going to turn the ball over. They’re your highest-usage players. Mayer will have the ball in his hands and is young and talented enough to do difficult things, so he’s going to turn the ball over. (Smith committed four turnovers and Mayer was involved with more than the three he was “credited” with. Kaufman-Renn committed four.)

But in a perfect world, Purdue might this season replicate the foundation of efficiency built around Carsen Edwards and Ryan Cline in 2019 and into 2020. That team had two high-volume, high-usage gunners who were freed up to do their thing by the fact no one else on the floor turned the ball over and they offensive rebounded at a high level.

When you look at the cast around Smith and Kaufman-Renn right now, you see a lot of low-turnover players who should be highly efficient making open threes. There are capable on-ball defenders, likely high-percentage finishers around the rim and rebounding, rebounding, rebounding. The mix profiles almost ideally.