Purdue Basketball: It’s Time to Work the Jab

I have a post sitting in drafts comparing how Purdue uses its pick-and-roll and post-up game to the way George Foreman used his jab to dominate Heavyweight boxing in the early 70’s. I spent a good bit of time on it, but I’m glad I held off on publishing. I thought this was going to be a heavyweight Purdue team that punished opponents to the body with TKR and Oscar Cluff on the inside, getting them to drop their hands, and then knocking them out with three-point shooting.

I was wrong.

This team hasn’t shown any inclination to wear down an opponent before knocking them out. The Illinois game felt more like an all-action lightweight fight, with both teams landing from the outside without doing the nasty work on the inside that grinds the other fighter down and makes them quit. UCLA and Illinois had plenty of life left in their legs for the final round, and both landed the final, decisive punch with a pick-and-pop 3 (or multiple pick-and-pop 3’s).

You can clearly see Purdue’s lack of an inside “jab” in the decline of Purdue’s free throws/field goals attempted stat over the last three seasons.

2024: 41.3 (13th in the nation)

2025: 34.6 (130th in the nation)

2026: 26.8 (347th in the nation)

This Purdue team is obviously going to be more jump-shot-reliant than the 2024 team led by man/maple Zach Edey, at the center of the Boilermaker attack, but the regression from the 2025 to 2026 is shocking. In 2025, Trey Kaufmann-Renn was ranked 60th in the nation, drawing 6.1 fouls / 40 minutes. In 2026, Trey is drawing 3.5 fouls / 40 minutes. To put that in context, Fletcher Loyer has drawn 4 fouls / 40 minutes in 2026; needless to say, TKR is not in the top 500, much less the top 100 this season.

Trey moving to power forward, rather than playing as an undersized center, to facilitate the addition of Oscar Cluff and the return of Daniel Jacobsen, explains some of the regression, but you would expect Jacobson and especially Cluff to help fill that shortcoming. Cluff is drawing 4.2 fouls / 40 minutes, and Jacobsen is averaging 4.7. If you look back to the previous paragraph, you’ll notice that Loyer is drawing .2 more fouls than Purdue’s 6’11”, 255-pound center. Obviously, this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison because of the change in role and competition level, but Cluff drew 6.5 fouls / 40 minutes last season at South Dakota State, which was 32nd in the country.

I don’t think this is a personnel issue; instead, it’s a commitment issue. Trey and Cluff can still get to the line, but Purdue is committed to shooting jump shots instead of being committed to punching the opponent in the gut down low. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling for Coach Painter to run the Edey offense with Cluff or TKR. I don’t think that would work either, because Zach is, well, Zach, and as good as Cluff and TKR are, they’re not Zach. Still, I think the offense can be closer to a 2025 team than it is at the moment without a significant change to the offense, and that wouldn’t just help the offense; it would also help the defense.

Drawing fouls not only puts your team on the line, but it also puts the opposing post players on the bench. On top of that, it helps put your best free-throw shooters on the line late in the game. Braden Smith should live at the line late in the game; instead, he’s attempted 4 free throws total in the last two losses. You do the work early, drawing fouls down low, so the other team can’t be physical with your guards late in the game, but Purdue isn’t committed to the job. Here’s every shot they attempted in the second half against Illinois (I’ve bolded the shots that either created fouls or had a reasonable chance to draw a foul):

19:51: Loyer – 3 Pointer – Miss

19: TKR – 5-foot hook shot – Miss

18:18: Braden – 17-foot step back jumper – Miss

17:17: CJ – 16-foot jump shot – Make

16:40: CJ – 16-foot jump shot – Miss

16:31: Cluff – Layup on Offensive Rebound – Make

15:38: Cluff – Layup – Make

15:18: Smith – 16-foot jump shot – Make

14:38: Smith – 7-foot floater – Miss

13:34: Mayer – 3-pointer – Make

13:08: Mayer – 3-pointer – Miss

12:26: Benter – 3-pointer – Miss

11:59: Benter – 3-pointer – Make

11:15: Jacobsen – 8-foot jumper – Miss

10:35: Smith – 7-foot step back jumper – Make

9:38: Mayer – 14-foot pull-up jumper – Make

8:57: Smith – Layup – Make

8:29: Smith – 7-foot jumper – Make (and 1)

7:55: Smith – 15-foot jumper – Miss

7:35: Cluff – Layup – Make

6:27: Cluff – 7-foot hook shot – Miss

5:46: Benter – 3-pointer – Miss

5:18: Smith – 3-pointer – Make

4:36: Smtih – 11-foot jumper – Miss

4:02: Cox – 3-Pointer – Miss

3:51: Mayer – 3-Pointer – Miss

3:00: TKR – 7-foot hook shot – Make

2:07: Smith – 15-foot step back jumper – Miss

1:22: TKR – 10-foot jumper – Make

0:45: Smith – 3-Pointer – Make

0:10: Smith – 3-Pointer – Miss (Fouled)

0:4: Smith – 3-Pointer – Miss

Summary:

Purdue was fouled on two shot attempts in the second half (both Braden Smith pump fakes), even counting those fouls, which Braden created, Purdue attempted six shots in the entire half that had a reasonable expectation of drawing a foul, and one of those was a Cluff rebound and put back. Otherwise, they were taking make-or-miss, one-and-done jump shots.

That’s easy for Illinois. Purdue isn’t getting into their legs on defense. They’re not getting bludgeoned by Trey actually rolling to the basket or getting on the low box, going up strong, and drawing a foul. They don’t have to deal with Cluff banging on one of the Ivisic brothers, creating contact, and getting to the line. They don’t even have to deal with anyone trying to get to the basket. Oddly enough, the only Purdue perimeter player that’s shown any inclination towards driving the ball is Loyer; everyone else is looking for a pull-up jumper.

Go back and watch the film from last year. Teams did not enjoy playing Purdue. The Boilermakers didn’t cause opponents to question their continued participation in the sport like they did when Zach was fouling out entire front courts in 2024, but opposing big men didn’t look nearly as froggy down the stretch either. By the end of the game, TKR either had the opposite big man in foul trouble or had him worn down from dealing with the endless string of pick-and-rolls. Illinois’s David Mirkovic gutted Purdue with a three-pointer to give his team a four-point lead with 1:46 remaining in the game.

Mirkovic is a great player, but he picked up his fourth foul at the 5:30 mark of the second half, and Purdue did nothing to encourage him to pick up his 5th. In the past, he was toast. Purdue would get him matched up on TKR (or Cluff), throw the ball into the paint, and make him guard with 4 fouls. Even if he didn’t commit his fifth foul, it would be a layup line for Purdue in the post while he actively tried to avoid picking up his fifth. He didn’t suffer any consequences for playing with four down the stretch. It’s almost like the Boilermaker bench didn’t realize that one of Illinois’s key players was a foul away from disqualification.

That’s not how Coach Painter has done things in the past.

Ivisic and Mirkovic looked fresh down the stretch. If anything, Purdue’s big men looked tired and frustrated because they’ve been guarding Keaton Wagler all game for…reasons that require another article. Purdue

Can Purdue Fix This?

I think so, but they have to start doing the hard things and get back to basics. Playing with Braden must be extremely fun because he finds the open man on every play. Braden’s house fly vision (seriously, his eyes have eyes) finds the open man, but the other team can use that to their advantage. CJ Cox couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn against UCLA, and subsequently, found himself playing the role of “the open man”. The longer Fletcher’s shooting slump lasts, the more the ball is going to find itself in that role.

The opposing defense can dictate which Boilermaker shoots by leaving someone open. If you don’t want TKR to grind out points on the block and foul out your power forward, you can take him away by guarding him, and the Boilermakers will look somewhere else for points. This feels like a real monkey’s paw situation for me, because when Zach was ruling college basketball, I felt like the Boilermakers ran their entire offense to get Zach a shot, contested or not. Now they’re doing the opposite, and I hate it as well. Instead of running the offense to get TKR or Cluff a shot, they run it to get open shots, and the other team is happy to give them jump shots. Sometimes Braden makes the correct pass to the wrong player instead of forcing the ball where it needs to go, even if that means sending TKR (or Cluff) to the block and not accepting anything other than an inside shot, contested or not. I don’t want that to be Purdue’s only offense, but I’d love to see that sort of pragmatic approach to the game more than I’m seeing it now.

It almost seems like Trey is holding the ball and waiting for the double team when he does get it in the post instead of making a strong move and going into contact. Even when he does make a post move, it involves multiple pivots and ball fakes, and ends in a hook shot or a push shot. I can’t remember the last time Trey caught it on the block, made his move, and went up through contact to draw a foul. I know he can do it. I watched him torture opposing post players last season, but for some reason, that’s not happening this year.

There have been whispers that Trey may not be 100% healthy, and honestly, if he’s nursing a back injury, that explains a good bit. It makes sense to me because he doesn’t look nearly as explosive at the rim this year. TKR isn’t Shawn Kemp (am I dating myself with this reference), but on occasion, he would jump off two feet and rock the rim. I haven’t seen that from him recently; he seems to be playing to avoid contact rather than draw it. If he’s healthy, Coach Painter and Thompson have an entire season’s worth of 2025 film to look at and try to get him back on track. If he’s not healthy, they have a skilled Aussie who is six-foot-eleven inches tall and six-foot-eleven inches wide; they could send him to the low block with similar results.

If you think back to the start of this interminable article, you’ll remember me mentioning George Foreman, so I’ll end with this: Muhammad Ali knew he couldn’t beat George Foreman straight up in Zaire. He watched Foreman turn Joe Frazier into a sentient heavy bag. Frazier took Ali’s jab and kept moving forward. Foreman’s jab stopped Frazier dead in his tracks, even when he blocked it. Frazier couldn’t get inside, and Foreman did what Ali couldn’t do, and knocked Frazier out in the second round. Ali didn’t want to be on the end of Foreman’s jab, so he roped George into going away from his jab and swinging for the fences. Ali knew he couldn’t win fighting Foreman’s fight, so he tricked him into fighting someone else’s fight.

That’s what I see other teams doing to Purdue right now. They don’t want the Purdue “jab” (TKR or Cluff on the low block or a pick-and-roll to the basket, so they encourage the Boilermakers to do something else.

Ali put his back against the ropes and encouraged Foreman to unload haymakers until he ran out of gas. He called it the “rope-a-dope,” and as Foreman said later in life, he was the dope.

How do you stop a fighter with an unstoppable jab?

Make throwing other punches easy.

How do you stop Purdue from gutting you with their inside game and fouling out your front court?

Make shooting mid-range jumpers easy.

It’s time for Purdue to start throwing jabs. They have one of the best in the business when they are dedicated to throwing it. That’s how you make the other team quit on the stool, and I’d love to see IU do just that tonight.