The Ten at Ten

The Boiling Point: This week’s Ten at Ten.

Back where it belongs.

Welcome to the Ten at Ten, a list of 10 positives, negatives, or anything in between from the previous week in Purdue sports posted at 10am eastern every Sunday.

Positives

1) Made a Bowl Game- Purdue is finally back to postseason play for the first time since 2007. Yeah, it might be a lower tier bowl, but it is something to build on for the future. Not to mention Purdue gets 15 extra practices. Since the Big Ten splits payouts from bowls between teams, Purdue helped increase that amount. Almost no one predicted Purdue to make a bowl this year, especially when Rob Henry went down, so I’d say its a good accomplishment; even if looking at Purdue message boards you’d think Hope was already fired and we had IU’s record.
2) Football Offense- Purdue was able to rack up 508 total yards on offense; 218 passing and 292 rushing. Outside of one missed touchdown pass, Caleb TerBush looked good. He was an efficient 16/25 for 192 yards and 1 beautiful touchdown pass. He also was able to drive Purdue down the field to answer Indiana’s scores. I liked the look of the wildcat offense in the second half since IU couldn’t stop it. Purdue was also able to make up the loss of Ralph Bolden with the play of Akeem Hunt.
3) Akeem Hunt- When Bolden went down, Hunt once again showed what looks to be a bright future for himself. He rushed for 100 yards on just 10 carries. Hunt won’t really be a between the tackles bruising type runner, but when he hits a hole in the offensive line he flies through it. Can’t wait to see what he does over the next couple years.
4) Football Halftime Coaching Adjustments- The first half for Purdue was not a good one. Its a rivalry game so you can’t assume Indiana is going to be terrible, but really, they are. Maybe it was just a halftime speech by Hope to motivate the team or they just switched up what they were doing(wildcat a lot in second half), but you have to give credit where credit is due. Gary Nord has been calling all the offensive plays this year so maybe Hope decided to have more of an input with his job potentially on the line; unfair as that may be.
5) Basketball Offense- Purdue is continuing to put up a ton of points. Definitely unexpected with the loss of JaJuan Johnson and E’Twaun Moore since this team was supposed to more of a win with defense type team. Robbie Hummel and Ryne Smith are pretty much lighting it up from everywhere. Anthony Johnson is very effective in his minutes off the bench. Even Kelsey Barlow is getting his points. If Terone Johnson can keep up his previous game’s performance and the low post starts scoring more Purdue should be able to keep up with anyone. Only thing that makes me nervous is the reliability on the three point shot. We have a good group of shooters than can hit it, but I wouldn’t say they are all guys who can do it through a whole season. Smith has streaks and Robbie I wouldn’t classify as a three point shooter even though he can do it well. In Big Ten play there’s going to be a game where we won’t be hitting that shot and will have an embarrassing blow out loss. The inside game needs to get it going even if it’s Robbie getting on the block more.
6) Jacob Lawson- I have been really impressed with how Lawson has played so far. Before the year pretty much all anyone knew about him was he was extremely athletic and could dunk and block a lot of shots. He has proven he can block shots and dunk, but he has also shown he is as a pretty reliable rebounder. There’s no doubt Lawson has earned his playing time. Travis Carroll hasn’t shown he can have a consistent game and has lost his starting spot to Sandi Marcus. Sandi has also shown improvement and is a beast in the paint. The fact that Lawson is finishing out games on the floor tells you what Coach Painter thinks of him.

In the Middle
7) Football Defense- After a terrible first half where it seemed they couldn’t stop anything, the defense stepped up for the most part in the second half and only allowed 8 points. Josh Johnson had a huge interception as debatable as it was. It looked as though Purdue’s defensive line just wore down IU’s offensive line by middle of the third quarter.
8) Rebounding- Purdue’s rebounding has improved somewhat but I don’t know how much you can brag about out rebounding Coppin State by 10. This is something that looks to be a work in progress for awhile. Carroll’s rebounds won’t just fall into his hands all the time. Marcius and Lawson are just going to keep getting the technique down to effectively rebound instead of out jump. You can expect Robbie’s numbers to increase. I’ve been really impressed with Anthony Johnson’s rebounding. He always seems to be battling down there.

Negatives
9) Penalties– Once again Purdue had a ton of bad penalties. They accumulated 90 yards worth on 9 of them. Luckily, they will have a lot of time to work on them before the bowl game. Not much else to say about them besides they just need to stop.
10) Big Ten Officiating- Once again, the B1G officiating did not let me down this week. I don’t have a complain about what was called in the Purdue game. I have a problem with what wasn’t called. Purdue had 9 penalties for 90 yards. Indiana only had 2 for 30 yards. One of those wasn’t even during play, it was after the play. There were numerous times when IU was holding right in front of refs and nothing was called. Like I said, I don’t have a problem with Purdue’s penalties, just be consistent across the board. Consistency is a gigantic problem across football and basketball.

Bonus Positive: Purdue volleyball is the 5th best team in NCAA tourney. In other words they were the top #2 seed and host the first and second rounds Friday and Saturday. Try and make it out to support them. Volleyball is a fun even to attend at Purdue.

Do you have any positives, negatives, or anything really? Let us know below.