Purdue looks different this season. Still looks great, don’t get me wrong. Still huge, with Zach Edey. Still feisty, with Braden Smith. Still the deepest team in the country, with really good players like skilled 7-2 Swede Will Berg and explosive 6-8 wing Brian Waddell of Carmel relegated in the box score to DNP-too damn deep.
Purdue looks different from seasons past in just one way, but it’s a great way, and No. 10 Gonzaga found out the hard way Monday evening when the No. 2 Boilers chased down the Zags and then sprinted right past them, 73-63, in the opening round of the Maui Invitational in Honolulu.
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Some things haven’t changed, obviously. Center Zach Edey didn’t shrink, and he’s still doing things like this: 25 points, 14 rebounds and three blocked shots against a Gonzaga team that has size. Just, not enough size.
Braden Smith is still jutting and strutting and controlling the action, with 13 points, four rebounds and six rebounds. Plus five steals. Only two turnovers. Went 6-for-8 from the floor. Another efficient, scorebook-stuffing game from the 2022 IndyStar Mr. Basketball winner from Westfield.
The Boilers are still deep beyond belief. They played nine guys within the first five minutes, bringing Mason Gillis (66 career starts), Caleb Furst (33 starts) and Ethan Morton (29 starts last season alone) off the bench, and went to their 10th guy before halftime. And player No. 10 – OK, he’s wearing No. 5, but you know what I mean — will be in the NBA in three or four years. That’s freshman Myles Colvin of Heritage Christian, who has a big-time pro future but first has some 3-pointers to make for Purdue. Colvin made two more Monday, making him 9-for-14 from distance (64.3%) on the season.
And shooting isn’t even the most remarkable part of Colvin’s game. What, pray tell, is?
Well, here we are. About to discuss what’s different about this 2023-24 Purdue basketball team.
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Lance Jones, Camden Heide, Myles Colvin: Wow
Purdue fifth-year guard Lance Jones is a roadrunner, beep-beeping in and out and past the Zags or Coyotes or whatever. Jones played 26 minutes and players from Gonzaga still couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. He was moving too fast.
Jones got to the rim when he wanted, dealing with Gonzaga’s size with strength or an acrobatic reverse or, on his first bucket of the game, a layup thrown high but softly off the glass. Jones’ speed also created for others, like the defensive rebound he grabbed and then took off, passing six players on his way to a two-on-one fastbreak he finished with a feed to Gillis.
Purdue hasn’t had a player this fast since Carsen Edwards’ All-America season of 2018-19, and to be honest, I don’t think Carsen was this fast. Last season the Boilers were generally slower than their opponents, and not just because Edey is 7-4 and nearly 300 pounds. Braden Smith can go, but Fletcher Loyer lacks footspeed, and he was playing nearly 30 minutes per game last season from necessity. With the addition of Jones, a 1,500-point transfer from Southern Illinois, Loyer is averaging less than 24 minutes and the Boilers can handle a day like Monday, when Loyer was 0-for-3 on 3-pointers and 0-for-6 from the floor overall.
And the 6-1, 200-pound Jones isn’t even the best athlete on the team. He might be the second-best, but we’ll need to see more of 6-7, 205-pound redshirt freshman Camden Heide to be sure. Heide is a circus unto himself, something you saw last season if you arrived at Mackey Arena in time for pregame warmups, when Heide put on a dunking show. You saw it Monday night when he cut from the corner to the rim and Smith, attacking the paint, flicked a lob toward the rim where Heide caught it and dunked it despite getting his face all tangled in the net.
Seriously, this guy.
But the best athlete on the team is Colvin, an absurdly explosive 6-5, 200-pound specimen who turned 18 just three months ago. The question about Colvin when he arrived: Can he shoot? Four games into the season he’s 9-for-14 from 3-point range and appears to be lacking what you call a conscience. In the best of basketball ways, I mean.
Colvin missed a 3-pointer with about four minutes left and Purdue trying to close out the game, but when Smith fed him next time down the court, Colvin shot another and buried it. Colvin was then beaten on a backdoor cut defensively, and let it affect him so much that he drained the next 3-pointer he tried so purely, the net didn’t move.
Any more questions?
What the addition of Jones, Heide and Colvin says about Purdue is this: The Boilers were already bigger than you — already stronger, deeper, tougher and more experienced, too — but in years past they could be exploited athletically.
Those days are gone, kind of like Lance Jones: They’re gone, fast.
Zach Edey, Braden Smith still in charge
But some things just don’t change. Edey remains that most unique of big men, with the stamina to play 33 minutes, the body control to stay out of foul trouble and the touch to make free throws. Edey committed zero fouls against Gonzaga but drew enough contact to shoot 10 free throws and make nine, pushing his season accuracy to 33-for-40 (82.5%).
Smith remains the kind of guy who does this: Soaring for a defensive rebound between the 6-6 Gillis and Gonzaga’s 6-10 Braden Huff, then taking off the other way. Pretty soon Smith is inside the opposing 3-point arc and finding Jones, cutting from his left, for a reverse layup.
Smith also remains this fiery: Ball in his hand in the final six minutes, Purdue leading 58-53, and attacking Creighton transfer Ryan Nembhard, Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard’s kid brother. Smith throws a layup high off the glass and watches it hit the rim once, twice, three times before turning to the Purdue bench and bellowing: And one!
The ball was still bouncing on the rim. Four times, five times, and in. Smith hit the free throw for a 61-53 lead, then hit Colvin for those two sealing 3-pointers, and that was that.
Not everything was perfect, mind you. Purdue will have to shoot better from distance than its 4-for-17 showing Monday (23.5%), a problem it had last season too — shooting 32.2% from 3-point range for the season (291st in the country) and going 5-for-26 (19.2%) in that first-round loss to Fairleigh Dickinson in the 2023 NCAA tournament. The Boilers also had more turnovers (13) than assists (11) Monday, including some lackadaisical miscues from the normally steady likes of Gillis, Loyer and Edey.
Those are wrinkles to be ironed out for another day. On this day the Boilers are 4-0, getting ready to play No. 8 Tennessee in the second round of the Maui Invitational, and already answering one question:
No, this is not the same Purdue.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
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