Griffiths: Some Purdue fans won’t bother watching Boilers play Indiana
By DOUG GRIFFITHS
ISL Assistant Editor
I was talking to a fraternity brother from Upstate New York yesterday and have to admit I wasn’t at all surprised by what he had to say about Saturday’s Purdue-IU game.
Yes, he’s definitely what I would call a diehard Purdue fan, one of those that even if you paid him you still couldn’t keep him away from watching any Boilermaker contest, and definitely not a Purdue-IU clash.
This year though is different he said as he doesn’t have much interest at all in tuning into Saturday’s affair. He claims the outcome is a foregone conclusion and it won’t be pretty from a Boilermaker perspective.
Go ahead and call him a fairweather fan, although he’s anything but. I’ll call him a realist. Purdue fans won’t want to hear that, but the truth hurts sometimes.
The fact is if Purdue wasn’t competitive whatsoever against IU in Mackey Arena earlier this season suffering their worst home loss in school history, how in the world is it going to put up any kind of fight in Assembly Hall?
It’s not, and therein lies the problem with this Purdue team. The Boilermakers appear to have little to no fight and little to no heart. Say what? A Purdue team without any heart or fight? True, that’s been the calling card of Boilermaker basketball for decades under Matt Painter and Gene Keady, but that vital ingredient that has led to 23 NCAA Tournament appearances and 29 wins over the Hoosiers in the last 32 years is missing with this group. Incidentally Keady was 23-27 against the Hoosiers, including 21-20 versus Bob Knight, while barring an upset of historic proportions Painter will lose his fourth straight to IU and as a result would be 6-8 against the Hoosiers.
Painter seems fed up with this group.
On Wednesday night, he was so fed up in fact that he got tossed from the Illinois game in Champaign after getting ‘T’ed up twice by an official after arguing a non-foul call. It was a very un-like Painter move, who isn’t even close to as animated on the sidelines as Keady used to be (i.e. remember his classic coat tosses?).
To Painter’s credit though during his brief tirade in U of I’s Assembly Hall, he showed more passion and emotion than his 12-13 team has all season.
Purdue has talent, but certainly not enough to win on talent alone.
What’s missing is playing with the kind of passion and emotion that players like Brian Cardinal, Chris Kramer and Robbie Hummel showed every time they stepped on the hardwood. All of Purdue’s past great teams had an abundance of grit, determination and the ability to play harder than anyone they faced.
Remember when Iowa’s Jess Settles once said Keady could take five people off the street and mold them into a Big Ten championship basketball team? Those days seem a distant memory in West Lafayette now. In reality, though, Purdue had those qualities just last year, but apparently when Hummel departed so did the Boilermakers’ trademark.
I know some of you out there are defending this current Purdue team yelling, ‘They’re young.’ That they are, but aren’t you tried of using that excuse 25 games into the 2012-13 season?
We didn’t hear that defense when the Baby Boilers led by Hummel, E’Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson were making noise as freshman in 2007-08 en route to a second-place Big Ten finish, an NCAA Tournament appearance and finishing with 25 wins.
Speaking of the Big Dance, Purdue will have its streak of six straight NCAA Tournament appearances snapped this season. There won’t even be an NIT appearance.
That’s hard for Boilermaker fans to stomach, but not nearly as hard as the fact that their program has fallen so far so fast and IU’s has risen from the ashes.
I’m not saying Purdue can’t recover next year and turn things around, but big man A.J. Hammons is going to need some help (i.e. an outside shooter or two) and the Boilermakers better plan on spending countless of hours working on their games in the offseason like IU’s Victor Oladipo and Will Sheehey did. Playing with a pulse might be a good idea, too.
It’s hard to believe we are just a few years removed from it being Purdue’s year when the Boilermakers had all the ingredients to end their Final Four drought and possibly win their first ever NCAA Tournament, while Hoosier fans were suffering through another dismal season thanks to what Kelvin Sampson had done.
Now though it is IU poised to make a run at the Final Four and possibly win the school’s first national championship since 1987.
Like IU fans a few years back, Purdue fans are only left with cheering for anyone who plays the Cream and Crimson. They’re hoping the Hoosiers won’t win their first Big Ten regular-season championship since 2002 and tie Purdue with 21 overall regular-season league titles (the Boilermakers have 22 Big Ten championships overall thanks to their 2010 Big Ten tourney win) and/or win their first Big Ten Tournament title next month in Chicago. Plus, Boilermaker faithful will pulling for IU to get upset before reaching Atlanta, the site of the Final Four, and then plan on watching a mass exodus of talent from IU to the NBA (which will indeed happen).
So come 2 p.m. tomorrow Purdue and IU will again renew their once storied rivalry that has been anything but since the days of Keady and Knight.
Every IU fan on the planet will either be in Assembly Hall or glued to the TV watching what should be another blowout win over Purdue. Meanwhile, those Boilermaker fans brave enough to watch will be hoping somehow, someway their team can put up a fight and not get embarrassed like they were last month.
It’s ok Purdue fans if you don’t tune into this one. However, if you do, you might want to keep the Alka-Seltzer handily. This one will get ugly early.
