The Butterfly Effect for Purdue Basketball: Purdue's decommitments

“The Butterfly Effect” is a limited-run series GoldandBlack.com is rolling out this summer highlighting events that occurred or decisions that were made that rippled out and helped Purdue reach its current level, highlighted by the last season’s Final Four and leading into this much-anticipated coming season.

An example of the Butterfly Effect in this context: Roy Williams leaving Kansas for North Carolina, thus pulling Bill Self from Illinois to Kansas, leading to Bruce Weber getting the Illinois job, and Matt Painter being promoted at Southern Illinois, all just as Purdue’s post-Gene Keady plans had to be made.

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It’s difficult to really look back at decommitments’ ramifications with any real knowns about how things would have unfolded under different circumstances, because what a player might have been at one school might be very different than what he’d have been at another.

For example: Chances are, had Derek Willis stuck with his ill-considered early commitment to Purdue years back, Matt Painter and his staff would have invested in playing him and developing him and may have helped him become a big-time player. Instead, Louisville talked him out of Purdue and Kentucky took him just to troll Louisville. In Lexington, he was mostly a four-year backup who was recruited over every year at the peak of John Calipari’s NBA feeder system days at UK. Still, Willis was gifted enough to play pro overseas. What might he have been able to do had he been more accomplished and experienced after college?

But there is no question that while some of the players Purdue has lost commitments from might have been good at Purdue, the ripple effect created often made the Boilermakers big winners in the plus-minus of the transaction column.

First, C.J. Walker, the Indianapolis native Purdue took an early commitment from in 2014 for its 2016 recruiting class only to see him decommit in 2015, leaving Painter and his staff back in the market for a guard.

The player it wound up with: Carsen Edwards, who became an All-American and one of the most exciting players in school history. He was central to the modern-era Boilermakers’ greatest pre-Final Four NCAA Tournament run and helped make Purdue fashionable for guards at a time when it was becoming known as a school for big men.

Had Walker, who’d go on to sign with Florida State before finishing up at Ohio State, stuck to his commitment, Edwards is never recruited and perhaps the course of Purdue history shifts ever so slightly, if not considerably.

Then, there’s Jameel Brown, who committed early to Purdue during COVID. In fairness, Brown’s commitment was made having never visited Purdue and made almost solely on his relationship with assistant coach Micah Shrewsberry. Once Shrewsberry got the Penn State job during the pandemic, there really wasn’t much binding Brown to Purdue. He’d never been to campus and never met Purdue’s coaches in person. Such was life in recruiting at that time. Brown followed Shrewsberry to Penn State, closer to his Philly home. He’s now at Temple.

Now needing a guard again, Purdue wound up with Braden Smith, who became an All-American and one of the most exciting players in school history. He was central to the modern-era Boilermakers’ greatest NCAA Tournament run, with the best possibly yet to come. Smith enters his senior year as the leader of a potential national title contender, with a chance to break the NCAA’s all-time career assists record. (It is not outside the realm of possibility Purdue still would have recruited Smith even had Brown stuck, as they’re very different players.)

In recent years, Purdue lost commitments from guard Dravyn Gibbs-Lawhorn and forward Kanon Catchings, and while there is no way to say for certain Purdue would have been better or worse off had they enrolled, it is fair to remind that Purdue has been built heavily around competitiveness, camaraderie, common cause, etc., and there were clear red flags around both players, or their families. Both players are now at their second schools.

If either, or both, came and stayed, would Purdue have had the flexibility to add Omer Mayer and Oscar Cluff this spring?

All due respect to those players, but Purdue definitely fell upward in those situations.

One decommitment we are not covering here: Point guard Kyle Molock in the 2012 class. That was an injury-related mutual parting of ways, which led to Purdue recruiting Ronnie Johnson, who was a better prospect anyway, though he didn’t work out as hoped in West Lafayette.