Weekly Word: Indiana, pass fakes and more

Why? Because it has words, it's posted weekly and we're just that unimaginative. (Actual feedback from Week 1: Definitely like the content, but a new name would be useful.)

Anyway, here are some random thoughts for the week, most of which will be Purdue-related.

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No Easy Road: I don't cover Indiana, but I cover basketball, and I like to think I know a broken team when I see one, and Indiana looked barely whole in getting boat-raced at the Barn this weekend.

I know injuries have really weighed the Hoosiers down, but at the end of the day, it still has two first-team All-Big Ten-caliber players in Romeo Langford and Juwan Morgan. And this is a team that was good enough many moons ago to beat Marquette and Louisville and just not bad enough to let Michigan State beat itself in East Lansing.

I don't bring this up to mock Indiana, but to underscore the point that if you're taking Indiana lightly here because IU is lying in the gutter currently, you best tread lightly.

They're capable of so much more, and it took some extraordinary shots for Iowa and Ohio State to win in Assembly Hall and the universe does have a funny way of straightening out.

Does Indiana have the will to go on? That's an important question. If they've packed it in, then maybe things play out as they would seem likely to on paper.

But if they haven't packed it in, then I'll remind you that Purdue has had damn good teams go into Assembly Hall to play damn bad IU teams and have to fight like hell to win.

That can be the nature of these games, and if the fans haven't packed it in themselves, that place is no picnic either. Last time Purdue played on the road, the Xfinity Center crowd affected the game. It did. It affected Purdue, and the Boilermakers' body of work in such environments is uneven. This isn't a lifeless Value City Arena or empty Bryce Jordan Center. This is more like Breslin and Xfinity, where Purdue lost by 18 and 14, respectively, and didn't exactly get the finest hours of its best player's career.

IU's stuck in spoiler role, bound to finish the season with the best wins of any team left out on Selection Sunday. It can deal a body blow to its rival's Big Ten title hopes, if it cares enough to want to at this point.

Purdue has the easiest path of any Big Ten contender the rest of the way, but "easy" is relative. Really, there's no such thing. "Easiest" — I prefer the terms "manageable" or "user-friendly," actually — and "easy" should not be confused for one another, because Purdue still has to play in Bloomington and Minneapolis.

Everyone's beating everyone in the Big Ten this year, and I don't know if that's the sign of a great league or an average one, but regardless, the way this season has gone, no one will bat an eye should Indiana knock Purdue off this weekend, except maybe IU fans.

The Boilermakers must be on high alert, and even if they are, that guarantees nothing.

Big Little Play: Grady Eifert's made so many big shots for Purdue this season, made so many key plays, his opportunity-to-impact ratio being off the charts.

And he did so again on Saturday afternoon, when a dicey outing for Purdue had gotten really dicey in the final minutes, Penn State having gotten within just five against a turnover-riddled Boilermaker team again riding a turnover spree.

Then, Eifert made the biggest play of the game, and the simplest.

He caught an inside-out pass beyond the three-point arc, and with a Penn State defender running at him like a man on fire to water, he pass-faked. A simple fundamental that split Penn State's defense like a crunchy taco, allowing Eifert a path to the basket that he eventually decided to seize. His contested bucket at the rim stopped Purdue's bleeding.

It was the simplest play possible, that pass fake, and a great decision in a big moment. Had Eifert tried to make the no-brainer play there and moved the ball over to Carsen Edwards, the scrambling Lion would have had a crack at the pass and another turnover might have come from it.

It was a big play in the moment, but also one that reflects what Purdue has been and what it needs to be from here on out.

The Boilermakers have been very good offensively in recent years because of that pass fake and stuff like it.

I know there's nothing subtle, very little nuance, about Caleb Swanigan's viciousness, Isaac Haas' gravity or Carsen Edwards' manic and singular focus on scoring, but those players have been surrounded by simplicity, by savvy, by the sort of offensive lubricant that can make teams go.

There's nothing exciting about shot fakes, pass fakes, ball transfers, whatever minutia you can think of. But Matt Painter has built teams around players who "know how to play," as he says, and has been profoundly rewarded for it.

This single play was a shining example, and perhaps a tone-setter for what Purdue needs to be the rest of the way.

Purdue's in a great spot in the Big Ten race, but it's not trending well. Maryland's halfcourt pressure in College Park turned the Boilermakers, uncharacteristically, into a pretzel. A few shot fakes and pass fakes here and there and maybe Purdue would have shot 35 percent in the second half instead of half as much.

The Penn State debacle was an out-of-body experience for this team, brought on in part by the Nittany Lions' timid pressure, but also by Purdue's own failings.

Purdue has to keep to what's put it in this position in the first place, and right now, it's trending in the wrong direction.

It's important to stick to, or get back to, basics, just like Eifert did when his team needed it most.

What If? Purdue has fared well this season using opponents' pressure on Carsen Edwards against it, to the point where the Aura of Carsen Edwards has been just as effective, it's seemed like, as Carsen Edwards himself.

A year ago around this time, opponents stopped playing into Purdue's hands by double-teaming Isaac Haas, fundamentally conceding 20 a game to the Boilermaker big man in exchange for taking away Purdue's ability to hold its opponents over a barrel in rotations and spank them with threes.

What if opponents now do the same with Edwards? What if they ease off some, moving some of their attention to Ryan Cline, crowding the lane and taking away Matt Haarms' dunks.

When opponents backed off their Haas doubles, they were conceding high-percentage two-point shots. Should they back off Edwards some, you'd be conceding lower-percentage shots with the hope that his 36-percent shooting in Big Ten play sticks.

Look, Edwards is getting his points no matter what. We've seen that. Can he get enough to beat you, though, if Cline isn't making threes, Haarms isn't dunking, Trevion Williams has less room to operate in the paint? Ask Texas.

I don't know, just something to watch maybe.

The second half of a Big Ten season can be very different than the first, and you're seeing some modest differences in how Purdue is getting guarded. Nebraska and Minnesota switched bigs onto Nojel Eastern, then dropped off to clutter the lane, more so than was happening earlier in the season. Maryland switched its point guard, Anthony Cowan, onto Cline. Penn State threw that zone trap at Purdue just to play stall-ball and wound up with a bunch of turnovers.

Maybe the next iteration is for opponents to stop worrying so much about Edwards and more about everyone else. There is precedent after all.

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