Coming off as guard-centric a season as Purdue's known in its modern era, the Boilermakers' annual establishment of identity for this season could find a familiar landing spot: The interior.
That's where Matt Haarms and Trevion Williams, certainly two of Purdue's best players and most known commodities, exist, and their combination of ability, productivity and experience suggest that Purdue could be more an inside-out team than not as it redefines itself post-Carsen Edwards and Ryan Cline.
Matt Painter's M.O. at Purdue, and he's not alone in this practice, is to craft each team uniquely to its personnel as opposed to crow-barring that personnel into a specific mold.
In that sense, though the season remains months away, his starting point right now may be clear.
"I would say the strength of our personnel is our interior scoring and our passing to go along with good three-point shooters," Painter said. “Matt Haarms and Trevion Williams are two guys that you know can score the basketball, pass the basketball, make decisions. And not a lot of people have two quality bigs like that now, when you sprinkle all the people that can shoot around them.”
It wasn't all that long ago that Purdue became known for its collective massiveness, for players like 7-footer A.J. Hammons, for Karl Malone-ish power forward Caleb Swanigan and for the apartment building that was 7-2, 300-some-pound Isaac Haas.
In those days, Purdue fed the post more than just about anyone in college basketball, playing to its strengths, but also striking a potent balance with an array of effective shooters complementing its big men.
Now, though, if Purdue plays to its apparent strengths on the interior, it doesn't necessarily mean playing through the interior.
“I don’t know if it’s necessarily playing through the post as it is playing through post players who can also be playmakers," said associate head coach Micah Shrewsberry, who'll oversee Purdue's offense. "Getting the ball in their hands and letting them make decisions, as long as they’re making good decisions. (Haarms) is always going to be a low-turnover guy who doesn’t take many risks, and you feel good about having the ball in his hands, and Trevion’s the same way. He’s shown he’s a good passer who can handle the ball in spaces and get it to people where they need it to be.
"When you have guys like it, it always helps you, 1) relieve pressure and 2) you can move a defense from side to side when you play through your bigs.”
Coming off a year in which he played the bulk of the Big Ten season at an all-conference sort of level, Haarms — now a junior — could be on the verge of being Purdue's next outstanding center, albeit a very different one.
Haarms averaged nine-and-a-half points or so and led the Big Ten in field goal percentage, by a mile, on usage dwarfed by that of Purdue's backcourt, producing around the rim, as a screen-and-roll dive man and even stepping out and making the occasional three, an area of his game that could expand this season.
Williams was a game-changer for the Boilermakers mid-season, after he'd gotten physically to the point where he could contribute, months after enrolling at nearly 320 pounds. In Big Ten play, he averaged a staggering 20.3 points per 40 minutes, on top of giving the Boilermakers a rebounding presence at the rim that really mattered.
From an offensive perspective, Purdue seems intent to leverage its interior presences, with a promising, albeit largely unproven, group of shooters orbiting them, a model that worked well for the Boilermakers several years in a row prior to last season's overhaul.
That could mean more post-ups, an element that faded to the background last season as Purdue so often lived and died by the jumper, living a lot more than dying, as it won the Big Ten and literally came within a split-second of the Final Four.
Purdue posted up, on average, fewer than a half-dozen possessions per game, and a chunk of those opportunities went to point guard Nojel Eastern.
That will change, now, and it will start with Haarms, who'll play all over the floor, but get his most opportunities to date as a back-to-the-basket scorer, where he may not overpower every post defender he encounters, but will tower over most and can shoot with both hands or face and drive. He's been efficient in his Purdue career shooting hook shots in particular.
“I expect him to be one of the best players in our conference," said assistant coach Brandon Brantley, who coaches Purdue's big men. "He should be one of the best defensive players, as well as a guy who’s capable of averaging a double-double in our league.
“He’s got the skill to do a lot of things and Coach is going to allow him to do that. We don’t really put guys in boxes like that.”
It will include playing out beyond the arc, where he was 5-of-13 from three-point range in Big Ten play last season, adding a pick-and-pop dimension for a Purdue team that probably used more ball screens than ever before during Painter's tenure. Haarms has said that over time, his game may expand to the point where he's a higher-volume participant in the long-range shooting game.
"I think me being a threat out there, I think I’ve said it every time we’re talking about that shot, it’s going to become important for me," Haarms said this summer. "If guys don’t have to guard me out there, it’s not going to be good for our offense, so I think me being a threat out there is going to be important. And then on the mid-post as well, taking jumpers out there could be a great threat just keeping the defense on their toes.”
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Haarms is all of 7-foot-3, something of an optical illusion of a 250-plus pounds and, coaches say, stronger than he gets credit for, or that his narrow physique suggests.
Williams is the polar opposite, the other end of the spectrum for a post tandem that would seem to complement each other well.
The 6-9 Williams isn't the above-the-rim presence Haarms is, but he is the wide-bodied and overwhelming presence Haarms isn't.
Painter has long tabbed 250 pounds as a benchmark weight for Williams, for a variety of reasons, and says his sophomore still has work to do in that area.
As of late summer, Williams remained around 270.
But, it's probably a very different 270 now, his conditioning improved through the course of a long season a year ago and perhaps sharpened by USA Basketball training camp in Colorado Springs this summer, then in helping Team USA win the 19-and-under gold medal in Greece in June. In late August, Williams ran a mile in 5:39, representing marked progress over any point last year.
Williams established himself right away last season as one of the Big Ten's more formidable presences around the basket, as both a scorer and especially rebounder, but in so doing only occasionally flashed the skill set Purdue hopes can set him apart even more in the future — the ability to dribble, certainly pass, and maybe even shoot.
"Coach already talked to me about it," Williams said in June, about Painter's hope he can be more versatile as a sophomore, "and I've kept that in the back of my mind, trying to be able to play more than one position, the 4 and the 5 spot, and being able to guard, move my feet and be able to guard that quicker 4.
"He talked to me about how they used (Caleb Swanigan) his freshman year when they had A.J. Hammons, or even like a Vince (Edwards)."
Purdue is going to feature its posts this season, but again, that doesn't necessarily mean playing through the post, per se. It hopes Haarms and Williams can both function all over the floor.
Maybe together.
Last season, Purdue played the two side-by-side only sporadically, as in situations where it needed rebounds above all else. In years prior, Painter tinkered with twin-post lineups, but aside from Swanigan's freshman season — he played almost entirely forward, with a skill set that suited that position — such experiments yielded little.
Now, though, Purdue did commit this summer to a meaningful extent in at least trying to play Haarms and Williams together — and that says nothing of senior Evan Boudreaux, who Painter says he's counting on this season — as more than a gimmick, the pros and cons of which will undoubtedly be examined as preseason practice draws nearer, then unfolds.
“Being able to play that style gives you a different look than what people usually see," said Shrewsberry, who spent the past six seasons in the NBA, as a Boston Celtics assistant coach. "You can stay in your usual things you do with those guys because they are good at passing and catching, they can step out and make shots, they can dribble-handoff, and they can both play on the perimeter.
"But you can also play some smash-mouth ball with both those guys in at the same time.”
Offense may not be the greater of the two concerns to weigh. Painter is first to admit there are trade-offs defensively, though — as with anything else — they're matchups-dependent.
When Haarms and Williams play together, either could go to the 4, but Haarms' mobility and experience make him the likelier choice. Of the two, Painter says, he's the better-equipped defender both at the basket and away from it, while Williams is the more physical rebounding presence. Pulling either attribute away from the iron is something to be considered closely.
And defensively, less-mobile units these days can find themselves compromised, and trading Aaron Wheeler or Mason Gillis, each of them fleeter of foot than most any 7-footer and built for cleaner switches, at the forward spot for a center inevitably comes at the cost of mobility.
“Where that can pose problems is that we’ve always been a team that switches four ways on ball screens," said assistant coach Steve Lutz, who oversees the defense. "But it obviously just depends on the team and the guards that are coming off those ball screens, in terms of how hard it would be for (Haarms) to keep those guards in front of him, and on the flip side of that, that Trevion has to continue to get better at that, because it’s something he can certainly be more capable of as he continues to get his weight down and increase his stamina, and those sorts of things.
“But it should allow us to get every single rebound, defensively, and should allow us to protect the rim some, and I’d like to think it would keep us out of some rotations, because we would not have to double the post as much."
Again, pros and cons.
But Haarms and Williams are due to be two of Purdue's best players, and Painter's always taken the practical approach of working to leverage his best players best he can.
As the 2019-2020 closes in, how he and his staff do so with their concentrated strength in the post will go a long way in determining what this Boilermaker team looks like as it redefines itself once again.
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