It is that time of the season when games come wrapped in varied ribbons. Some are made-for-TV spectaculars. Others fill out tournaments both legitimate and contrived. A whole slew are guaranteed victories for the home team and, for the visitors, guaranteed paydays. Then there are the kind Purdue and Loyola played Saturday at Mackey Arena.
This one was a clash of unknowns, as in no one yet knows what to expect from either. Just take the Ramblers. In their Horizon League’s preseason poll, they received two first-place votes, two last-place votes and at least one vote for each of the spots in between.
A similar air of uncertainty surrounds the callow Boilermakers, who start two sophomores and three freshmen, with a fourth in their eight-man rotation. Clearly both are early works in progress, evidenced often even as Purdue ran off an easy 84-53 victory.
The Boilermakers shot an impressive 59.6 percent overall (28 of 47) and 53.3 percent on their three-pointers (8 of 15). But they still must mature in an area that was manifest as coach Matt Painter yelled directions: “Move!”
“Move it!”
“Move the ball!”
“Screen someone!”
“Use your dribble!”
Those words indicate the nuances his Boilermakers must master effectively to run his motion offense. It demands reading, reacting and, most of all, patience rarely possessed by players who so recently were high school phenoms free to fire at will.
That reality bedeviled the Boilermakers in their opening two games, which they won despite shooting just 37 percent overall and 21.4 percent on threes.
“We had a couple of discussions with all of them about being unselfish and sharing the basketball and having good looks,” Painter said Saturday. “I thought our guys did a good job of being unselfish and passing up shots to get better shots.”
Offense, too, is a prime concern of the Ramblers, who this year are without Blake Schilb and Majak Kou. They combined to score 42.8 percent of their team’s points last season, which means it must find ways to grind out tough victories.
“We’re not going to be able to score as easily,” coach Jim Whitesell said. “But part of it is also growing and developing and getting better. … Today we got pushed around, we got shoved around, we got outplayed everywhere.”
That was a succinct description of this clash, which Purdue grabbed with just three minutes gone. It trailed then by a point, but set off on a nine-minute flurry when it simply pummeled the Ramblers and showed just how badly they miss their old snipers.
The numbers from that interlude tell this tale well, for in it Loyola managed just four points while going 2 of 8 from the field and committing seven turnovers. The Boilermakers, in contrast, exhibited their newfound patience and, in this stretch, went 7 of 11 from the field while scoring 21 points.
The Ramblers, down 16 then, never again got closer than eight, which left Whitesell to wonder about a team that was still an unknown.
“Our biggest issue … we have a lot of guys with a lot of experience back,” he said, his frustration obvious. “My concern is where is their growth, where is their development, where is their take-chargedness in terms of their roles? … We haven’t made that jump as a group.”
But, for at least a game, the Boilermakers had, which is why Painter said: “You live through your offense a lot, especially when you’re young. You can’t do that. You have to live through your defense and your rebounding and just making good decisions. We had too many guys trying to score. … You have to make them understand they have to pass up some shots for better shots. We still have a ways to go. But we’re getting in positions to score. We’re making progress.”
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smyslenski@tribune.com
