CHICAGO — There were moments last season when Dakota Mathias' and Ryan Cline's interchangeability blurred the line between two of the five positions on the floor beyond recognition, to the point that when assistant coach Greg Gary called a play from the sideline, he didn't call it for the 2 or the 3, but for a spot in the floor.
In those days, the race was on, and these days, Mathias doesn't deny cannibalizing his teammate's opportunities a time or two, beating him to that spot, then taking that shot.
“There would be times we’d get a play call, and I’d turn around and Dakota would already be in the spot," Cline said Thursday at Big Ten media day. "I was like, ‘Man …'
“He was a play-stealer for sure.”
Cline laughs.
So does Mathias.
"Seniority rules," Mathias joked, from Spain, where he's playing professionally.
Indeed it does, and now for Cline, it must.
Gone is Mathias, one of four departed seniors from a team that won more games than any that came before it.
That seniority, for the most part, did rule last season, to the expense, for one, of Cline.
Obviously, Purdue had options, lots of them, and lots of good ones.
But in Cline's case, a player known as a "shooter" just didn't.
It's not that Cline didn't make shots — he made just under 40 percent of his threes — but rather that he didn't get shots. His minutes actually went down as a junior, a lot, by almost four per game, due to those seniors, plus of course the emergence of Carsen Edwards into an All-America-level player.
"He's sacrificed so much for the betterment of the team," former teammate P.J. Thompson said.
He averaged less than three-and-a-half field goal attempts per game and in Big Ten play, took 19 fewer shots than he did the season before. Cline played double-digit minutes in every game last season; in 11 of them, he took two or fewer shots.
"It's really hard for someone to be confident when they play 18 minutes," Coach Matt Painter said. "... You get taken out of the game when you do nothing wrong."
There will be no such concern now.
There will be games this season in which Cline doubles his average of 17.3 minutes from last season.
The "rhythm" he so rarely found last season he'll now have every opportunity to play his way into each time out.
As he puts it, last year's shot fake to set up the extra pass now might become the faked extra pass to set up a shot
“It’s my time now," Cline said. "Only playing 13, 14, 15 minutes per game, that wasn’t something I was happy about. That’s not to say it wasn’t right because the players in front of me might have been better than me. But this summer and the beginning of practice, I think I’ve evolved my game and am ready to take on a very large role.”
Cline remembers Mathias laughing on the bench after big-timing him to get those shots.
"I couldn’t help but laugh, too," he said. "But he’s right. It was more of a seniority thing, and I’m not going to say that I don’t play that card now, because I do.”
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