The Boiling Point: The Ten at Ten.
This is a new feature for the site where every Monday at 10 a.m. Eastern I will post some combination of 10 positives and negatives from the previous Purdue football game. Could be all positive, all negative, 7 positive and 3 negative, etc.
Purdue vs South East Missouri State:
Positives
1) Defense– Purdue’s defense limited SEMO to just 153 yards of offense and only 9 first downs. SEMO didn’t threaten to score the whole game. Didn’t even make it past the 40 yard line on the scoring side of the field from what I remember.
2) Ricardo Allen– He has been thrown at approximately 6 times in the first 3 games and its been clear why he has only been thrown at that many times. Allen’s interception set the tone for the rest of the game. Being able to literally take the ball out of a 6’6″ WR’s hands is a great thing to see with Notre Dame’s Michael Floyd coming up in two weeks.
3) Running Backs– Akeem Shavers set the tone in the first quarter and he finished 2 TDs on 75 yards rushing. Ralph Bolden and Akeem Hunt joined in on the fun with 2 TDs themselves. This game also gave us the chance to see what kind of talent Purdue has at the RB position. Hunt along with Brandon Cottom and Reggie Pegram all seem to have bright futures.
4) Robert Marve Is Healed– We finally got to see how healed Marve really is. From my vantage point he still had a noticeable limp, particularly when jogging, as the slightly intoxicated guys behind me liked to point out a lot. Though against pretty terrible competition he did show what he can do. As Danny Hope said, he’ll be a very talented back up.
5) Caleb TerBush– This is by far the most confident TerBush has looked so far. He was calm the whole time and had a very efficient game with 143 yards on 14 completions with 17 attempts. TerBush will continue to start and rightfully so. He hasn’t done anything to lose that job.
6) Linebacker Improvement– Maybe it was a schematic change or just the bad opponent, but the line-backing core seemed to take a step in the right direction. With Dwayne Beckford sidelined the first quarter with an academic issue, Chris Carlino stepped into the starting role. I came away impressed with what he did and thought he injected a ton of enthusiasm into the defense. Will Lucas absolutely lit up that one WR down the middle, something that needs to continue.
7) Wide Receiver Play– There didn’t seem to be any miscommunication with the WR core. Routes were smooth and they were getting open, wide open. Antavian Edison showed his toughness when Marve led him into the cornerback and he got destroyed, but still held onto the ball. As a whole they did much better blocking on screens and for the running backs as well.
8) Enthusiasm of Special Teams– This is probably more of an observation, but I’ve never seen a special teams unit as excited to do their jobs as this one. It was most prevalent on the kick off team when they were pumped to go out there, particularly true freshman Raheem Mostert.
9) Weather Was Awesome– It was a beautiful mid-70 degrees with a nice breeze. Way better than the scorcher the first game of the year. (Had to put something here, there weren’t many negatives).
Negative
10) Academic Suspensions– I have only one negative for this game since it was pretty much solid all the way around. Both Ralph Bolden and Dwayne Beckford were suspended for the first quarter because of an academic issue. Since it was only that quarter, it was probably missing class or “forgetting” to do a homework assignment. These are two starters on this team and that can’t happen. We’re lucky we were just playing SEMO, but can’t have that for the bigger games on the schedule.
Have any positives or negatives you want to add? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments area below.