Express Word: Personality filters, Purdue basketball and more

Express Word is our weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, we discuss the complexities of college sports these days and more.

BREAKING: I AM NOT A NARCISSIST

So last week, just to get an idea what this is all about, I took the Profile test Purdue’s athletic department, and Matt Painter most notably, has committed heavily to. The behavioral test pioneered by alumnus Chad Brown and his partners told me that my five “core descriptors” are as follows: Loyalty, integrity, competitiveness, cooperation and freedom. No mention of debilitating narcissism or any of the deadly sins, so I’m calling that a win.

But I’m not writing this to tell you about me, but about Purdue and what this test has represented for it, most notably Painter, over the years. It started years back during the program’s early 2010s downturn, when Painter and his rosters got along like oil and water, which he took the blame for, the birth of his clever “This isn’t a school district” line.

Those teams, players were lying for sport, over stupid stuff: Signing in for mandatory breakfast. This is what coaches have to deal with when relying on young people to do what they’re told or to always do the right thing.

One thing led to another — yatta, yatta, yatta — and along came Brown from the corporate world with this test. Painter dove in, hoping to find an effective first-line-of-defense character filter. It has been a bedrock of the program’s recruiting approach and while causation is difficult to pin down, the results on the court do kind of speak for themselves.

Here’s what I’ll tell you about the test: It is fast and easy, with no real wrong answers, no way to “game” it to engineer a specific finding. The pace of it and cadence of the questioning draws on impulse and by extension, breeds honesty. It’s hard to hide impulse.

Purdue didn’t go to the Final Four last year and very well could again this year because of a digital personality survey, but the test does put a face on why Purdue has one of the most consistent and steady programs in America, with about as strong a compatibility between coach and roster as anyone.

It’s central to what I’l call here the Painter Funnel, the layers of process that whittle down lists of dozens of recruits into the handful that fit best. The glam of the recruiting process, the sanity of families, the questions asked up front, all that stuff, have always laid priority bare for Purdue and now the money part of it has taken the filter to another level. It’s cool to want money, playing time and NBA possibilities, but if those are presented at hello, before winning, academics, development, etc., then that’s a tell that has worked to Purdue’s advantage, and the test adds another silo to it. It’s not perfect, but it’s something, something football programs should be diving head-first into, if you ask me.

No, you are not going to sign players solely off the data culled from this test, but in the absence of any opportunity to relationship-build during the drunken portal cycles, this makes too much sense.

And, obviously, if a kid is willing to take 15 minutes away from his phone or his girl to do this for you, he is interested. If he isn’t willing, then he’s not and you can drop him right there. These processes are too big and the stakes too high these days for coaches to not use every conceivable filter available to them. You may cast a wide net and not come up with all prime seafood, but if a few syringes, broken beer bottles and sea robins (IYKYK) aren’t caught up in the net, great.

THE MATH OF PURDUE’S BASKETBALL SEASON

As college basketball too often gets talked about in the analytics age like people are just reading off the back of an old baseball card, I think every season and every team is different and the analytic views taken should be heavy on context.

So here is how I personally am going to present things quite often this season to come, when the value of Purdue’s added size has to be quantified somehow. I am not a math guy so can’t create some sort of formula to pump data into every game, but am open to listening to expertise on the matter that would reflect these categories …

Second-chance scoring and field goal percentage: This would reflect Purdue’s defensive rebounding effectiveness, its added offensive rebounding punch and its rim protection, all weaknesses last season
Fast-break scoring: This would reflect Purdue’s ability to secure defensive rebounds, block two or three shots a month and generate turnovers on defense, while also taking the temperature on the greatest offensive concern: Turnovers and the damage they do to the defense.
Foul differential: Purdue has to get back to winning this column every game and should have a team to do it, with more size on the glass, more post-scoring options, harder-to-handle bodies and so forth. It is due for an officiating over-correction this season, especially Trey Kaufman-Renn.
Two-point field goal percentages: This accounts for rim protection on defense and on offense, the ability to generate high-percentage offense at the rim, in transition or on the offensive glass.
FGA + FTA differential: Purdue is going to be pretty effective on offense and that again puts an onus on maximizing possessions.

Purdue could have a great team, but winning and losing isn’t always going to decided by Kaufman-Renn getting 30, Braden Smith handing out 15 assists or the Boilermakers making a dozen threes as much as it will possessions totals, garbage points and attrition.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• Reminder: June’s football commitment deluge is SOP now. Not belittling anything that happens this month, but everyone’s going to get commitments one on top of the other. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re “cooking” or whatever. Time will tell on all these guys, but buzz does matter. Jeff Brohm used to take June commitments I’m not sure he even ever intended to sign just to stay in the headlines.

Things are probably different actually now that there’s money involved, so it’ll be interesting how these June frenzies play out in this modern climate.

• The College Football Playoff should just go straight to 20 teams. Save us the yearly “discussions” and stupid posturing. We all know where this is going, so just do it. Put half the SEC in, put half the Big Ten in, then token spots for the ACC and Big 12 and mid-majors and just seed the thing like the NCAA Tournament. There’s no right answer and someone is going to bitch about any format, but as long as TV is happy …