Weekly Word: Mason Gillis, Purdue football recruiting and more
Today, GoldandBlack.com continues a new weekly feature. We're calling it the Weekly Word.
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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Quick Reminder: This was late January of 2018, and Mason Gillis led his 3A New Castle team into Carmel, the 4A powerhouse and arguably the state's high school athletics flagship.
It should be mentioned this was no mismatch because one school was smaller than the other. New Castle had a great team, Gillis being the centerpiece of that greatness, undefeated to that juncture of the season.
The first quarter was a personal mixtape for the Trojans' Swiss Army Knife of a forward, the one with the body of a college power forward, a game that blended together a lot of everything and a maturity about him as a player that amplified it all.
During those first eight minutes, Gillis did it all, scoring inside, facilitating, rebounding, attacking off the dribble, or dragging Carmel's big men away from the basket and sticking them in the eyeballs with threes.
It was quite a show, to the point that Carmel had to spend the next three quarters with two guys assigned to guarding Gillis just to squeak out a narrow win on its home floor.
This game came a short time after Matt Painter had become personally smitten with Gillis and offered him the scholarship he'd later accept, and a few months before an injury — two of them actually, sort of — cost him a senior season that would have really been something, for the player and his team alike.
I bring this all up because out-of-sight, out-of-mind is a real thing and as Gillis enrolls at Purdue as a basically unranked player — it's hard to rank as a player someone who's not playing — and working back from the ground up, a reminder of what Purdue's getting in Gillis seemed in order.
Before he was hurt, he was a player, and there's no reason to believe he won't be that player again. It might take a few weeks or even months, but no reason.
And Purdue needs him to be. Before he committed, I thought he was the most important player the Boilermaker coaching staff was recruiting for that class, because of his skill level, its frontcourt outlook, his "fit" in the program by many definitions, and simply because Painter knows what works for him, and has a pretty good track record with guys he gets that he personally locked into. He's getting more and more of those guys, it seems.
Anyway, Purdue needs Gillis to be that player now.
Last year's class, as it turned out, brought no true forwards, because Trevion Williams wound up a center, and will be just that for the foreseeable future. Same for Evan Boudreaux, though as a senior, he's not part of the future, per se.
And should Purdue's best-case scenario — getting Hunter Dickinson — play out along with its most likely scenario of staying at three scholarships to offer, then the 2020 class won't bring a true forward either.
That means it's the Aaron Wheeler and Mason Gillis Show at forward, and their show entirely for some time at least.
And the needs starts now, because while Wheeler projects as Purdue's 4, he's its only 4, at least among returnees. Other options would require Purdue to play prohibitively big with Matt Haarms at the 4 or prohibitively small even with Nojel Eastern there. The latter is only me speculating, so don't think just yet that that's actually a thing.
Point is, there's minutes for Mason Gillis now, and a prominent role should he be ready for it. Beyond that, Gillis' skill set and wiring as a player fit in lockstep with the sort of player Purdue has won big with before at his position — that versatility and skill and IQ and so on.
Everything about him prior to the injury screamed readiness, in every sense of the term, from the physical maturity to basketball maturity to the work ethic that drew Painter to him.
Now, we'll see. While he's been fully cleared now after a long recovery process, he's not played a basketball game full-strength in more than a year.
There's no reason to believe he can't be the player, though, that he was before.
So it seems worth the reminder that that player is damn good.
Waiting Game: It's June 10 and Purdue has yet to receive a football commitment toward 2020 this month. That might not seem like anything out of the ordinary, but for Purdue, June under Jeff Brohm has been whirlwind-ish, and though the typically busiest portions of the month still lie ahead, there's reason to believe this June won't be like the others.
It's this simple: Purdue is recruiting a higher caliber of player now and needs to sign fewer of them than it has before.
That means more targets it will have to wait out, and less eagerness to fill up limited scholarship space in June.
For that reason, I don't know whether Purdue is working on recruits' schedules or vice versa but I'd feel confident in suggesting that if it needed commitments this weekend, it would have gotten commitments.
It might sound counter-intuitive to hurry up and host visits only to not hurry to get visitors committed, but I just think Purdue is going to play it cool this summer, let things play out in June, take a handful of commitments before July, then dig in for the long haul on some late deciders.
That is a high-risk, high-reward game, but as it stands now, Purdue should be playing that game with more cachet than ever, with the hope obviously that this season while keep its brand-name warm, because this could be that season where it steps up to that next level, however you want to define it, with Rondale Moore keeping it top of mind and Ross-Ade Stadium probably becoming more animate than ever.
Purdue may play a longer game in recruiting this year for a better player, not unlike the game it often won last season with Jalen Graham, Milton Wright and David Bell, but it's a game it might be able to win.
It just won't make for as eventful a June.
Great Problem To Have: Most years, I think Luke Goode would have a Purdue offer by now. I think the Fort Wayne Homestead wing is good enough and as importantly, enough of a fit, that most years, Purdue would have already issued him an official invite by now, even though he'll only be a junior this year to come.
Most years, Pierre Brooks wouldn't have gotten out of West Lafayette on Friday without an offer, after the 2021 player impressed at team camp.
Most years, I think Purdue would have offered Jake LaRavia this past spring, and had it , he'd probably be starting school in West Lafayette today. If you watched the Indiana All-Star series or paid attention to him during the season, you saw a player who's good enough, a good enough fit, and plays a position where Purdue could probably use another body.
Kiyron Powell. He'd have an offer, too, most years. Nijel Pack might have, too.
This isn't most years, however.
This is now, a time when Purdue is as hot on the recruiting trail as I've ever seen it in nearly two decades covering it, for a variety of reasons. It's a time when Purdue may not need to offer a good player ASAP because a great player might be waiting down the line someplace. For example, had Purdue taken LaRavia this spring, it would have cut the 2020 class from three to two, in effect, and had that happened, then it would be tapped out at the moment, at least on paper.
It just so happens that this momentum occurs at a time when Purdue's scholarships bottleneck, just five over two classes, making for hard decisions in 2020 — where Purdue has hit two home runs already and hopes for a third with Dickinson — and 2021, where the Boilermakers are sitting pretty early with a few elite players.
Purdue is in on terrific players. They're not necessarily different players than those that have gotten it here. They're similar from the perspectives of personality and fit and such.
They're just better.
That current reality suggests that Purdue's success of the past few seasons might not only prove sustainable, but might prove to only be the beginning.
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