Glue Guy, X-Factor, or Cursed? Ethan Morton Plays Ball

At times Ethan Morton's career at Purdue has seemed destined for greatness, at others, cursed by March and an unreliable jump shot.

Back in Butler, Pennsylvania, Ethan Morton was just a high schooler and Matt Painter was a Purdue head coach coming to see him for the first time in person. For most high schoolers, it'd be easy to get caught up in the need to show that coach what he can do on the court.

And Morton did, but not by scoring, a mark that most young players measure their worth. Instead, Morton took what the defense gave him, again and again, and by the end of it his team won as he facilitated and defended, but he barely had any points to show for it. He thought he might have blown it. What head coach wants a player that doesn't score?

One that says this after his team's scrimmage, talking in a lot of ways about Ethan Morton, but also his players in general.

"Just don't be consumed by it," Painter said about scoring. "I think it happens to a lot of guys. How they look at their value. Because you look at your value as a young player through your scoring more than just your worth as a defender, your worth as a rebounder, your worth really as a decision maker."

For Morton, those other immeasurables have often been obvious, but the scoring has gotten in the way. Morton is a quintessential glue guy that holds things together, but Purdue's offense is begging for more spacing.

Is this the season Morton can do both?

It didn't start out as planned, Ethan Morton's senior season.

It happened a week or two before Purdue's trip to Europe. A tweak in his hamstring, didn't seem too serious, and so he was back out there the Wednesday before they left for their four-game, nearly two-week excursion abroad. This time it was a little sharper, but he was still working on some drills, testing it out.

But caution won out. While Lance Jones and Myles Colvin got integrated into the system, as Camden Heide soared in for a highlight dunk, Ethan Morton was on the bench watching his team, playing it safe.

"Just trying to get healthy," Morton told me last week in the tunnel at Mackey Arena after practice. "Feel like I'm moving pretty normal. Soft tissue, don't want it to linger. So just being cautious - smart. Being smart but also trying to work it."

It wasn't until after the Europe trip that Purdue took an MRI on the hamstring and saw that there was a little tear.

Purdue's best stretch of the season last year coincided with Ethan Morton's best stretch as a Boilermaker. Morton was doing all that other stuff, being a defensive stalwart on the perimeter, but most importantly, creating for his teammates. It was his most impactful performance in college when he led Purdue to a sweep of the Phil Knight Invitational.

Against West Virginia, Morton had 9 assists and no turnovers, earning praise from Matt Painter. Then he had 4 assists and 4 rebounds against Gonzaga in another shocking upset. Against Duke, 6 rebounds and 6 assists, he had just one turnover the entire tournament and had five steals. He did this while shooting just 1 of 9 from three-pointer.

When Morton was doing everything else, the shooting woes didn't matter as much. Morton has been up and down in his career from three, barely playing his freshman year he made just 4 of 14 attempts, but in his expanded role during his sophomore season he made 15 of 34 three-pointers. A limited number of shots, but a staggering 44% hinted at Morton's shooting potential. Then he attempted 94 threes last season and made just 26 of them, the 28% shooting clogged Purdue's offense and took away the open lanes that allow Morton to do what he does best - find others in the half court and transition.

Was it the shooting slump that bled into the other parts of his game? Maybe. Morton told me his effort needed to be better this year. He can't let that slip. It's also just the difficulty of playing with someone as dominate as Zach Edey. Making shots while teams double-team Edey is a necessity. It wasn't just Morton though, the entire fell to some kind of funk at the end of the season.

"I think last year," Morton told me. "I can't pinpoint it - we went on that skid in February, we plateaued a little bit."

Morton has a big basketball brain. Basketball makes sense to him, and last season's wall was an inevitability for a young team.

"Last year, especially when we lost a couple - it's weird, it's almost reverse of how it should have went. We had a young team. Obviously, we have the young guards playing, younger big guards - even the guys that were playing a lot. I've never played a significant role. It was so good right away almost. We figured it out right away. So you almost knew - you never want to be bad - but you know at some point there's gonna be a wall that's gonna be hit with those young guys."

While last year's finish hangs over the team, so does its start, the potential they flashed, rising all the way to #1 in the polls for seven weeks. Morton knows what most of America knows, this Purdue team has the potential to be special.

"At the end of the day, if we win games, it's because Purdue didn't beat Purdue," Morton told me, echoing Painter's edict on taking care of the ball and not shooting themselves in the foot.

It goes by in a blink. Ethan Morton has another year of eligibility because of Covid, but this is his fourth and senior season at Purdue. It might be his last time suiting up for Purdue. That kind of thing hits different at the start of the season.

"It's hard," Morton tells me, leaning back against that tunnel that he's ran through for four years. "You get a little sentimental thinking about it... Obviously I want to be here as long as they'll have me and as long as I can contribute to winning. All I can do is - I sat down at the end of last year and really evaluated where I was as a player. It's kind of like - it's go time, right? A lot of guys don't get a chance to be on a team like this ever, if at all, and I've been lucky enough to be on a couple teams that have had a chance to be really special."

A few days later, hamstring wrapped in tight black, Ethan Morton would take the floor in the first of three scrimmages for Purdue. Lance Jones and Braden Smith were together on the other team, meaning that Morton was playing point guard at the other end. This was the player Morton was promised to be - a 6'7" point guard stuck in a wing's body. Someone with vision and pace, feel and intuition on the court, and despite the summer of rehabbing, the three years of almost getting there, something seemed to click for Morton. He was aggressive against Smith at both ends, his long arms getting to passes.

His stat line won't pop out at you at first. Morton had just 8 points, but did you see how he got those eight points? Tucked between the 4 rebounds, the 8 assists, and 4 steals, Ethan Morton looked like someone that sat through it, sat in it as Painter likes to say, and watched another March go down in flames. He looks like a player who found himself amongst that ash. It's a small glimmer, Morton dribbling, shot clock counting down, and the 7'4" player of the year in front of him. The rim wasn't an option, but a dribble and then Morton rises up, over Edey, and over some of those other things in his way - the doubt, the uncertainty, the previous years, the missed shots, all of them below Morton as the ball soars towards the hoop and in.

It's a lot, the metaphor, the perfect sports story. It remains to be seen if Morton's will end this way, but if it does, the final resolution started on Saturday even if this moment was built from March misery.

"Biggest thing I took from that day was - as soon as we got back we sat down and had a team meeting," Ethan Morton says at Big Ten Media day about Purdue's loss to Fairleigh Dickinson. "It started instead of getting away for a few weeks or a month, it planted a seed that month - you had to sit in it, think about it, and find a way to embrace it. You know everybody has a different story and different journey and hopefully that's part of a bigger, better picture down the road... it was uncomfortable all spring, all summer... sometimes you've got to learn how to live in misery."

Purdue learned to live in misery this summer. Morton doesn't plan on staying there this season.