Reaction To Willis’ Decision

The Boiling Point: Bad news comes for Purdue basketball recruiting on Sunday.

With one of  best 2013 basketball recruits backing out of a verbal commitment he made to Purdue back in April, there has been a flurry of reaction from those close to Willis, fans and recruiting people. Obviously, the situation isn’t good news for the Boilers. Purdue coach Matt Painter did a damn good job identifying a star, recruiting him, getting him to campus and locking him up. The only problem was that whole locking part is fluid despite Painter stressing with recruits how permanent the decision should be.

With that said, here’s a look at some of the comments from multiple sources regarding the situation.

"“Derek, his high school and us talked it over for two hours and we decided it would be best to re-open his recruitment so Derek is no longer committed to Purdue,” Derek’s father, Del, told Scout.com’s Brian Snow. “Derek still loves Purdue, but he wants to go through the entire process and take all five os hif official visits next year,” he said. “He won’t commit early to a school,” Will said. “He will probably just wait until it gets close to signing day next year and then he will announce where he is going.”"

"“It’s not that he didn’t like Purdue, he just wanted to see some of his other options,” Del Willis told Jody Demling of the Louisville Courier-Journal. “He wanted to make sure it was the right fit. Most of the time, you don’t marry the first girl you date. He didn’t have anything to compare it too. So, Derek just wanted to make sure it was the right place for him.”"

"@GoldandBlackcom: “Derek Willis committed to #Purdue 105 days ago. Cracked triple-digits, at least.”"

"@EvanDanielscout: “Now that Derek Willis is open, I expect 3 schools to quickly be involved. Louisville, Kentucky & Indiana. Sources they’ve talked to all 3”"

"“He still likes Purdue. I don’t think they will still pursue him, but I hope they do. We like Purdue.”  – Del Willis to Jody Demling."

"“But I do know that these things generally don’t end well for the school losing the recruit, and I wouldn’t anticipate this ending with Purdue getting a signed letter-of-intent from Derek Willis in the fall of 2012.” – Blog analysis from GoldandBlackillustrated.com’s Brian Neubert."

It will be interesting to see how Derek’s situation shakes out. It’s likely that Kentucky and Louisville are now going to be involved, so many think Painter might just move on. A lot of people are stinging at the move by Willis because the prime evaluation period for recruits just ended. But the positive is that Willis made his decision now rather than a year from now, which would be just a couple months away from the signing period.

Thoughts on the news?