Purdue basketball burning questions: What’s up with Braden Smith, backup bigs and rebounding?

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Purdue basketball crossed the one-third mark of the season still working to define its identity.

The Boilermakers opened the season with their conventional big man setup, then scrapped it to lean into small ball. They put two freshmen in prominent roles early, then saw some more experienced players assert themselves more and claim starting lineup spots.

Revisiting some of our preseason questions about Purdue, we see see both where this team has grown, where it has stalled a bit, and where it must continue to progress.

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Must Braden Smith play at an All-American level for Purdue to reach its potential?

When Smith took over one-third of the team’s shots and scored 31 in the exhibition opener at Creighton, it felt like a glimpse into the point guard’s usage within the offense.

That has not really transpired so far, though the nature of that exhibition — with a minimum of defensive game-planning by either team — certainly factored into his volume that night.

The emergence of Trey Kaufman-Renn also lessened some of the burden on Smith. However, those predicting “As Smith goes so goes the Boilers” can point to some small sample-size evidence through 11 games.

When comparing Smith’s production in Purdue’s three losses against that in the eight victories, two things jump out. First, while he’s shooting 88.5% at the free throw line in the victories, he has attempted no free throws in the three losses.

Smith has never been a high-volume free throw shooter. He only went to the line in two of the six NCAA tournament games last season. He did not shoot a free throw in five regular-season Big Ten games — all victories — or a Big Ten tournament quarterfinal win over Michigan State.

So perhaps future games will prove this to be more a case of correlation than causation. However, teams beating Purdue succeeded at keeping the ball out of…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/purdue-basketball-burning-questions-whats-094046328.html

Author : Indianapolis Star

Publish date : 2024-12-19 09:40:00

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