This story starts back in Lafayette, a real and metaphorically different landscape. Back then, Purdue was a try hard team. A recovering team. A team trying to pick up the pieces of the other end of a Cinderella story. Their fan base was a suffering one, a long suffering. The kind of suffering that travels through generations. Teams carry that weight, I've seen it.

Mathias. Haas. Thompson. Williams. Ivey. Hummel. Moore. Painter.

They've all had to endure the expectations which somehow exist in dichotomy - so high, yet so destined to collapse.

It almost makes you wonder. Does Purdue search for the biggest of big men because that's their identity or burden? All that weight needs broad shoulders.

But David Jenkins Jr. isn't that tall. Didn't look like he was carrying a burden either even as he was pressing a towel to his eye still dripping blood from a Mason Gillis practice wound two days before. Purdue hasn't played a game yet. Not a real one anyways. Optimism is high.

You can forgive him, he's new here.