Mark Turgeon hoped Carsen Edwards would miss at least one.
And since the Purdue guard was just a freshman, at that moment staring directly into a vertical wall of raucous student section, with the outcome of an important game on the line, 2.1 seconds on the clock and the visiting Boilermakers down one, Maryland's coach figured he would.
Besides, this was Purdue's 11th Big Ten game and Edwards had yet to miss from the line. So he was due, Turgeon thought, perhaps grasping at straw.
“We were 20-2 at the time. We didn’t know how to lose," Turgeon says now of Purdue's 73-72 win in College Park on that Feb. 4, 2017, afternoon, won by Edwards at the foul line. "And he stepped up and made both those free throws. That was pretty amazing."
After Matt Painter chose from a roster full of veterans the freshman to make the game-deciding play, Edwards looked perfectly calm as he stepped to that line, spun the ball around his hips — as has been his custom — and sank both foul shots.
Fearless, as Turgeon today describes Edwards, now an All-American at Purdue leading into his junior season.
But calm?
Maybe, maybe not.
Though never one to be particularly forthcoming with his thoughts and feelings, Edwards does readily speak of the nerves he feels before, and while, he plays. And that afternoon at Maryland was certainly one of those moments.
But that's the fine line he toes.
Nerves don't matter if they don't cross over into a form of fear that can affect a player, and one thing that has been very clear about Edwards to this point in his career: Very little affects him, adversely at least.
“I guess I’m just not scared of anything," he said. "I just kind of get with it, and it’s the game you love, so you already know what comes with it. And if you work on your game — which I still have so much to work on — and put in the time, you start to believe in yourself and there’s not much to be unsure about.
“I get nervous about everything, before every game. I’m just not scared. If that makes sense.”
That wiring has made the Boilermaker junior what he is: The Jerry West Award winner last season, a first-team preseason All-American this season and a player who may not feel fear, but may very well cause it, as one of the most formidable scorers in college basketball — a quick-trigger shooter with infinite range, equipped with elite speed and quickness and strength that belies both, along with a finely tuned understanding of the finer points of scoring, the product of his obvious zeal for training.
“I coached against Jimmer Fredette," said Nebraska coach Tim Miles, who coached Colorado State when Fredette starred at BYU, "and Jimmer was a guy with unbelievable range and you felt like he was always downhill, like the floor was tilted (toward your basket) and he was always just coming right down the pike at you. That was hard, and Carsen reminds me of that type of player. I know the feeling.”
So do Brad Underwood and his Illinois team.
It was Feb. 22 when Purdue visited Champaign, playing for seeding and still harboring hopes for a share of the Big Ten title. Vincent Edwards was out for the second game in a row with an ankle injury and the Boilermakers had just barely weathered a narrow outcome at home against Penn State in Game 1 without him.
Illinois was in the midst of a forgettable season, but Purdue looked vulnerable and very little has come easily over the years for Matt Painter's teams at the State Farm Center.
By the time Edwards was done knifing through Illinois' defense for tough finishes at the rim, sticking long threes and turning steals into dunks, he'd put 40 on the board, a feat Purdue hadn't seen since Glenn Robinson.
"He knew when to take over," Illinois guard Trent Frazier remembers.
"He's a dog. He's very competitive and wanted to win."
That Purdue team that played that night in Champaign still was very different from the one Edwards will headline this season, but some parallels can be drawn. Purdue needed Edwards' best on that night; it'll need the same, or something close to it, as often as possible now.
That night, Purdue's post-centric, often-intricate offensive style shifted right into the hands of the hot hand, heavy on high ball screens, a little isolation mixed in.
On that night, Illinois had no answer.
Whether anyone else would have is debatable.
“He’s special. He has great speed, great athleticism and he’s a physical guard that’s very hard to contain one-on-one," Underwood said. "He has extended range, so you have to get out beyond the NBA three-point line to guard him. And he’s a guy who knows how to win.
“Now everybody will find out if he can pass, because I’ve gotta think that he’s gonna get trapped a lot and forced to give it up.”
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And there will be the test for Edwards, and Purdue, this season.
Unlike a year ago, Edwards will undoubtedly be the centerpiece of opponents' scouting reports when preparing for Purdue. Before, it was Isaac Haas more often than not.
“I think using him in a lot of ways will be helpful to us and make it harder on the opponent," Coach Matt Painter said at Big Ten media day a few weeks ago. "I think using him in one kind of role helps the opponent. Moving him around, getting him in different spots, and different looks is important. He’s so good at cutting, speed-cutting along the baseline. He always gets separation. Ball screens, that type of action is good for him. Pinning down, running different sets, giving him dribble-handoff options, re-screens out of ball-screen, there’s a lot of different things. When he gets angles or in those advantageous scenarios, he’s very successful.”
Painter knows, though, that an offense built to feature a great scorer will be met with defenses built to neutralize one, at times by any means necessary.
Purdue is not nearly as proven around Edwards as it was, but it does like its raw materials, the core around its star that he'll need help from, but he'll need to help, as well. That's sometimes the standard for great players: Do they make those around them better? To win, sometimes they must. To advance their own careers, too.
“I don’t think things have changed too much for me, honestly,” Edwards said. “It’s about making the best decision and making the right basketball play every time. That’s my main goal. Just hitting the open man if I’m covered and if I’m covered, take the shot.”
That remains the same. Scale does not. Most everything Edwards does this season will matter, because there may not be a team in college basketball more dependent on a single player than Purdue will be.
For this particular player, it starts with aggressiveness.
“He’s wired to score, and I don’t want to take that away from him," Painter said. "The more he thinks about scoring, the better decisions he makes. It’s kind of a unique thing because in a perfect world, you’d like someone of that stature to be a playmaker, but you learn through coaching that guys are who they are and you’ve got to let them roll a little bit. But there’s still good decision-making in that statement. Even though I’m letting him roll a little bit, he has the ability to make others around him better, not just score 30 points a night.
"That happy medium is so important.”
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