As we continue the Big T1e1n Season, we’re giving tBBC readers the chance to gain insight into the teams and fans that the Buckeyes will be matching up with on Saturday.
First up, the guys from Boiled Sports come by to double dip the chips and steal our remote control- here’s our thoughts on their shenanigans as well:
Name one Purdue offensive and one defensive player that the nation hasn’t heard about but should have. What do they bring to the team that no-one else does?
Always hard to know who people have heard of and who they haven’t, but being Purdue, I would imagine there are a lot of guys nobody has heard of. On offense, I’ll go with Dan Dierking. Dan’s a senior RB who would have likely been third on the depth chart this season behind Ralph Boldin and Al-Terek McBurse, but due to injuries is the #1 guy. And he’s doing a great job. He’s not flashy, he’s not big, he’s not particularly fast… but he’s a solid, sure-handed, reliable, team guy who is easy to get behind. He’s worked very hard at Purdue and it’s paying off this year as he’s the starter and is averaging 6.2 per carry. Not bad.
On defense, we could also name lots of guys, but we’ll go with Kawann Short, a 305 lb sophomore D-Tackle. Short blocked a key FG in the Northwestern game that seemed to turn the feel of that game. He’s a big boy who is being helped by all the attention Ryan Kerrigan gets. Short has some huge potential and we like him. But then we like all the guys. No, not that way.
When your fanbase talks about Coach Danny Hope, what adjectives do they use? How is he perceived on campus and beyond?
Danny Hope is generating more mixed feelings that we would have ever expected. There’s a camp (that swells when Purdue loses to a MAC team) that wants him out, plain and simple. They think he’s not the right guy and that the program could be in trouble. That’s quieted a bit with the 2-0 conference start, but it’s right there under the surface. Our feeling — and we don’t think we’re alone — is that we love his fire, passion and emotion. This is a guy the players love b/c they know he has their back (see last year confronting RichRod and other examples). The downside, of course, is that he gets really up for big conference games but, like a young player, seems to have trouble getting fired up for mediocre opponents. And it shows in the team. Last year, they nearly beat Oregon at Oregon. And then lost at home to Northern Illinois. This year, they beat 5-0 Northwestern on the road…but lost at home to a terrible Toledo team.
Purdue football has long been a program that crushes the teams it’s supposed to crush — i.e., MAC teams, D-1AA teams and IU — and loses to the teams it’s not supposed to beat. Danny Hope is 2-0 against OSU and Michigan, programs that made Joe Tiller soil himself. But he’s lost some horrible games, too. This has led us to simply say we never know what’s going to happen with this highly emotional, volatile team.
And finally, in terms of Xs and Os, well, he’s a head-scratcher. Seems to make weird, emotional decisions there, too, and we simply don’t think his football IQ is very good.
The Boilermakers have always played the Buckeyes tough- a solid showdown in the ‘Shoe in 2008; last year’s upset victory in West Lafayette… Is there a particular reason that you see Purdue matching up so well with Ohio State?
We don’t think Purdue necessarily always matches up well with Ohio State (our fourth-stringers aren’t 5-star guys, for example). It’s more of one of those “nothing to lose” scenarios. Often, OSU is so favored, Purdue goes in with little to lose and thus the pressure is on the Bucknuts. As for the recent matchups, this Purdue defense tends to handle running quarterbacks well, so that’s a good thing — or has been — when it comes to Pryor. I also think that these guys know they’ve always played OSU tough and there’s a feeling that builds with that. Or maybe I’m overthinking it.
That loss to Toledo must have been a hard pill to swallow. How has the team moved forward from that rough loss? Have any significant changes been made to the team as a result? Any advice you can give us as fans?
They’ve definitely moved forward. They won at Northwestern and then dominated an admittedly-horrible Minnesota team. However, Toledo is really, really bad, too, so doing what the Boilers did to Minny is important. They had a bye after the Toledo game, so we had hoped for some shakeups, coaching reassignments, positional changes, whatever. They didn’t do that, but they came out focused and have looked better each game. It would appear they spent those two weeks adjusting from being the passing team they expected to be with Marve and Keith Smith (both blown ACLs) to the smash-mouth, read-option, running team they now are with Rob Henry at the helm.
Not to make excuses, but they’re on the guy who was expected to be the third string RB and the third string QB. It took a couple weeks to adjust, but right now they’re sitting at 4-2 and could easily be 5-1 if they’d just taken care of business against an awful MAC team. However, as you guys know, sometimes it takes a stinker loss to wake your team up.
What are your thoughts on conference expansion? Most of the focus in on how this will impact football programs- as a conference basketball power, what pros and cons do you see it having for hoops?
We don’t see it changing much in the basketball balance of power — it just gives the top teams a couple more wins each year against Nebraska. (Oh yes, I went there.) From what we understand, there will be no divisional alignment for basketball, just the big free-for-all. So that doesn’t change things much.
Speaking (briefly) of basketball- What adjustments will Purdue make with Robbie Hummel’s unfortunate injury?
Don’t get us started. The uninformed talking heads have all dropped Purdue from a top 2 or 3 team to barely in the top 25. That is idiotic, pure and simple. This team had no Rob Hummel during the crucial part of last season and still went to the sweet 16 and had a lead on Duke in the regional semis! And get this: this team might be better than that one, even without Rob. JaJuan Johnson is bigger and tougher, E’Twaun Moore is focused and the guys are seniors, too. Hungry seniors. Everyone else is a year older, plus Purdue brings in some very talented freshmen. I think people who are now counting Purdue out are very ill-informed and will be surprised. We can’t wait.
We have to ask- What does it feel like to have finished Tim Brewster’s career at Minnesota?
Nothing special, honestly. He was finished either way. What a terrible, terrible coach and program. Not sure if you’ve seen Black Heart Gold Underpants’ send-off for Brew, but it’s awesome… AND shows how fast and loose he played with the facts, too, making up his career coaching record, deleting bad losses from the media guide, etc. The guy was a joke, his teams were horribly coached and he dragged Minnesota to a point where Glen Mason looks good in retrospect. Difficult to do.
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