It's not going to matter in January. It's not going to matter in February.

Mason Gillis had one of the craziest stat lines you'll see in a Big Ten game.


"To be a plus 30 in 18 minutes is pretty hard to do," Matt Painter said, looking down at his paper box score after Purdue's win over Penn State.

Nothing else jumps out about Mason Gillis' stat line besides that. He had just 7 points, 2 assists, 1 rebound, and a couple made three-pointers. That doesn't scream integral, but it's becoming very clear that the best form of Purdue exists with Mason Gillis on the floor.

The plus/minus speaks to it, but those numbers are generally shaky in small sample sizes. Gillis played just 18 minutes against Penn State today. That's a small sample, but also indicative to a truth that Painter is all too aware of.

"Obviously," Painter would go on to say about Gillis and his dispersion of minutes. "If this game was a closer game, Mason would have played more."

The games will get closer. March is closer. Gillis has had to battle not just on the court, but against his body from the moment he stepped on campus. That's the price to pay for playing the way he does. But it's becoming more and more clear, when Purdue gets into the heat of it, when madness is amongst them, this Gillis needs to be ready to play.

The same Gillis that kept Purdue in it single-handedly at the end of the first half against Nebraska. The same one that helped turn this game from 8-8 to a blowout in five minutes.

Preserving this Gillis and having him ready for March could mean the different between Purdue's journey ending up in Phoenix or Detroit.