Weekly Word: Purdue football at the turn, basketball and more

The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com's weekly, obviously, column covering Purdue football, basketball and recruiting, as well as college sports issues, the true meaning of life, or whatever other topics might come to mind in a given week.

As the season's now halfway complete, the story of that season has already been written in pencil, and for as sick as you may be of hearing about it, Purdue is a thousand times sicker of living it: Injuries.

How much different things would be if Purdue was playing with a full deck, or even a mostly full deck, I don't know. The Boilermakers did lose at Nevada with as close to full a roster as they will ever have this season, thanks to five turnovers and assorted squandered opportunities.

But what I do know is that years from now, one of the many Purdue teams that will follow this one will have a bunch of injuries, and someone will look back in time for historical precedent and recoil at the reminder that the Boilermakers' best player was injured coming out of a break, and because of it, the quarterback suffered his own break, in his shoulder, one leading to the other, the zenith of a season of almost tragic comedy.

That's the story of this season to this point, though the story can be massaged over the next six weeks or so, as Purdue's talented young emerging foundation keeps on its crash course.

We don't know how this season will end up, but the possibility very much exists that this young and thin team's struggles didn't cease with the thoroughly impressive win over Maryland. There are still hard realities at play that at the very least can make consistency a challenge.

Still, there's no getting around what the difficulty of now might mean toward the prosperity of later.

David Bell and George Karlaftis are stars-in-the-making, and King Doerue has brought some answers to the backfield, both as a runner and receiver, and the latter element has been a valuable one to Purdue offensively.

I think it still might be premature to say Jack Plummer has secured Purdue's quarterback position 'til graduation day, but he's done a lot of positive things under difficult circumstances, competes and is getting better. Context matters. Plummer came into this with no experience, at the hardest position to play experience-free, with severe pass-protection concerns in front of him and a decimated corps of wide receivers around him.

Those are just the headliners, and if they're all better later because of this now, then Purdue in the long run draws some dividends from this injury debacle.

Purdue has some good teams coming down the road. That much is evident, and that's the comfort that comes amidst the chaos as the Boilermakers sit 2-4 midway through the season.

Recruiting's like so many other parts of life.

Credibility, and your word, matter.

And right now, one of Purdue's signature recruiting messages to elite recruits should bring with it ultimate credibility.

The Boilermaker coaching staff has set itself apart on certain players, and a certain level of player, with an immediate-opportunity pitch that doesn't ring hollow, as it might for a lot of places that simply need to even the playing field.

The reason it doesn't ring hollow: Evidence.

A while back, Rondale Moore and those around him were astute enough to look beyond the biggest names and the biggest brands to figure out what made the most sense, who he would be wisest to trust with his career largely in their hands, not just his college career but beyond.

You know how that turned out.

Moore gets the credit. It's his talent, and he's the one who's worked to get himself to this point.

But his immediate success — success puts it mildly — did afford Purdue ultimate credibility with those who'd come after him, that this is a place that'll give freshmen every opportunity, invest in them, rely on them, take the downs with the ups, etc.

George Karlaftis' commitment preceded Moore's success, but David Bell's came long after. Same pitch, only this time made in a way the recruit could see and not just hear, and so far, similar results. Bell is going to be a star, just like Moore, just like Karlaftis. Might be more to come in the program at the moment, too, and more to follow.

Maliq Carr, Tirek Murphy, etc., these are ambitious players in an era where the NFL matters in recruiting probably more than ever who see Purdue as a place where it be a faster track, somewhere their talent will stand out right away, where the coaches know the NFL, and where the coaches have a track record of showing they mean what they say. In a lot of ways, this is recruiting's era of the business decision, and Purdue has set itself up nicely. It's branded Itself as a bit of a destination of high-level players who want to stand out right away, and it's building a solid body of work to support it.

These past two recruiting classes specifically, they've represented a significant reversal of Purdue's modern-era recruiting fortunes, and the credibility it has seemed to have accrued In that arena suggests it to be sustainable.

I'm out of coherent, and even Incoherent, thoughts right now and this column was supposed to be posted an hour-and-a-half ago, so to fill space, here's my preseason Big Ten basketball picks, submitted a while back to the good men who've taken on the unofficial Big Ten preseason media poll.

Order of finish ...

1. Michigan State

2. Maryland

3. Purdue

4. Ohio State

5. Michigan

6. Wisconsin

7. Minnesota

8. Iowa

9. Illinois

10. Indiana

11. Penn State

12. Nebraska

13. Rutgers

14. Northwestern

Preseason All-Big Ten

Cassius Winston, Michigan State (POY)

Matt Haarms, Purdue

Zavier Simpson, Michigan

Kaleb Wesson, Ohio State

Lamar Stevens, Penn State

(For the Big Ten's ballot, they ask for 10, and I had Nojel Eastern on there, as well as Anthony Cowan and Jalen Smith of Maryland, Xavier Tillman and Ayo Dosunmo).

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