The Ten at Ten

The Boiling Point: This week’s edition of the Ten at Ten.

Sandi Marcius

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Ten at Ten, a list of ten positives/negatives/in between from this past weekend in Purdue athletics. With basketball season starting up, you’ll see some of that mixed in with the football.

Positives

1) Raheem Mostert- Against Wisconsin we got to see what type of play maker Mostert can be. We got glimpse of it in previous games, but now he was doing it against elite level talent. He was electrifying in the return game, racking up 206 kick return yards, a Purdue single-game record. Mostert is going to be a fun player to watch in the coming years.
2) Iowa and OSU won- “Scott, why is this a positive?” you ask? Loyal readers, let me tell you. Going into this weekend Iowa needed one win to become bowl eligible. Looking at their last 4 games, Purdue was going to be the most likely culprit of that 6th win. With Iowa winning, they’ll no longer be out for blood for that win, hopefully staying the beatable team they are. As for OSU, it looks as though they reverted back to old form against Indiana in a game closer than the score indicated. Against Wisconsin, they played pretty much opposite of what they normally had been. With Iowa winning and OSU reverting back to old form, its a good thing for a Purdue team that needs just two more wins to make a bowl.
3) Sandi Marcius and Anthony Johnson- Last night was the last exhibition game for the Boilers. In both games Marcius pretty much lived up to the hype of his improvement.  He’s a big body player with a decent amount of athleticism and will definitely be counted on this season. After red-shirting a year, Anthony Johnson looks like he could be a really good player. He hasn’t lost his great shooting stroke and he looks much quicker than last year. AJ is going to force Painter to play him.

In The Middle
4) Gary Harris Took His Last Visit- Reason I put this in the middle is that its not guaranteed Purdue will be his decision. This past weekend, Gary Harris made his last official visit to Michigan State. The saga will finally be over and he will be announcing within the week, potentially as soon as Wednesday which is the first day of the signing period. It looks as though it will be down to Purdue and MSU. Indiana pretty much sealed the deal they were out as soon as the violation involving him occurred, and it looks like Kentucky may have gotten in too late. If he goes by what he has told the media in that he wants to be close to home and play with people he’s familiar with, I see him picking Purdue. I’m sure everyone will be anticipating this decision.
5) Football Offense- For the most part the offense had a decent game. They just could never get any momentum since the defense couldn’t stop Wisconsin if it saved their lives. Were there some questionable calls? Yeah a couple, but none that affected the game with the way defense was playing.
6) Kwann Short- If there was one player who matched up with Wisconsin, it was him. Could probably include Ricardo Allen but Wisconsin didn’t really need to throw this game. Short was pretty much the only one able to get some kind of push against the offensive line, but eventually he was eliminated and just double teamed the rest of the game.

Negatives
7) Big Ten Officiating- There can not be a worse group of officials than what the Big Ten has. It isn’t just for Purdue’s games either. Against Wisconsin the officials called a fumble when it wasn’t with TerBush which moved the ball back from the 2 to the 5 as well as 3 blatant pass interference calls all in a row over two series. It’s not often you hear announcers be super critical of officials, usually they’ll just disagree and that’s it, but Craig James was making a point that they missed those calls. It’s just becoming a joke across the league now.
8) Coaching- I don’t even know if its possible to pick one thing out they did wrong since the blow out pretty much masked any mistakes. However, clearly Purdue wasn’t prepared for the running game. Yeah, no coach was going to make this a win for Purdue since Wisconsin was just better at every position, but have to at least try something which I didn’t see. I do give Coach Hope credit though for just saying they were bad in the post game interviews since he does try to put some positives in there.
9 and 10) Its not even worth splitting up the defensive line and linebackers since the same thing can be said about both. Outside of Kwann Short the defensive line did nothing. Could say Short did nothing as well but he was more of a victim of his talent by being double teamed and the rest of them not doing enough to prevent that. Monte Ball was able to just run through our front 7 sometimes completely untouched. Yeah Dwayne Beckford had a lot of tackles, but not hard to do if they’re running right at you after going right through the defensive line. Luckily for Purdue, only OSU has a decent running game and they’re at least not that good in the passing game. I want to write more about how bad they were but its not even worth it when one word can sum it up: TERRIBLE.


As always let us know your positives and negatives of this past weekend in Purdue sports.