Oh man what a start. Down 28-25 with near 4 minutes left, a little hand-wringing could be excused. Lose to Texas, lose to Marquette…not great, but we can work with that. Purdue didn’t exactly set the non-conference on fire last year either you know. But struggle against Chicago State and yeah there will be a couple questions.

But momentum matters so much in basketball. Jahaad Proctor gets a basket, then two free throws, then another shot from the field and things start to come together. Purdue ends the game outscoring CSU 68-21 and early in the second half it became clear that Purdue had woken up.

Relative value of wins against fodder like Chicago State aside, what have we learned from this game? Well, we learned that this team can flex when needed. We learned that they can bounce back after a challenging couple of games. And we learned that what we lack in a singular talent such as Carsen Edwards, we might have in a depth of guys who on any given night could give the team enough.

Isaiah Thompson paced the team with 17 points, Evan Boudreaux had 14, and wait hold up a sec. Thompson and Boudreaux? Leading the team? Sure, I guess. I’m not sure Boudreaux is going to be a consistent contributor to this team, and Thompson has the tools but is kind of young. But yeah, they did it, shooting nearly 60% from the field between them. Maybe this is a one-off event, but I can always feel good when the guys carrying you to victory aren’t the ones you necessarily expect.

So the difference today? Contributions from unexpected places, offensive rebounding (23, more than CSU had total), and the ability to wake up, focus on the right things, and turn the game around.

I don’t know where this team is going. I still think they’re going to get 20-21 wins this year and have a respectable showing in the NCAA Tournament. But I also think that Painter is going to coach this team up; that this team still has a lot of parts and pieces that we don’t know how they will ultimately fit together. Maybe the non-conference will be ups-and-downs, maybe that’s ok. But we are glad today was more up than down