Purdue Basketball: Rutgers Preview

The Boilermakers head to the Garden State to face the Scarlet Knights, featuring 2 elite freshmen.

Personnel

Rutgers on Offense

If you’re looking for the analytics, Garrett has them here.

Another team that isn’t a complicated scout: When Rutgers has their starting five on the court, they’re going to play 5-out initially, set a high screen for Dylan Harper, send a roller to the rim mainly for rebounding, and then Harper either shoots, drives, or looks for Ace Bailey—rinse and repeat.

Steve Pikiell wants Harper as the lead guard, Bailey as the finisher, and everyone else to take what they can find in the offense. Bailey’s 29.7 assist rate is 87th in the nation, and Ace Bailey takes 32.7% of their shots, good for 32nd in the nation. Combined, Harper and Bailey account for over 60% of the Scarlet Knights’ offense. You won’t find a better 1-2 punch in the nation, at least in terms of pure talent.

Interestingly enough, turnovers aren’t an issue for a young team with limited experience playing together. When you watch Rutgers play, you begin to understand why they don’t turn the ball over much: it’s always in either Harper or Bailey’s hands, and they’re usually looking to score. Once they get the ball to a scorer, he tries to score. There are very few extra passes in the offense, and no one is giving up a good shot to get a great shot later in the clock. If either Harper or Bailey can see the basket, they’re going to put it up.

While Harper and Bailey are undeniable talents, they are still undeniably freshmen. I’m glad Purdue is getting them in New Jersey early in the Big Ten slate. The problem they’ve run into early is finding a third option—or sometimes a consistent second option—when either Bailey or Harper is off their game. Regardless of talent level, it’s tough to win high-level college games with only two scoring options.

In their 84–74 loss to Indiana on January 2, Bailey went thermo-nuclear, pouring in 39 points, going 12-for-21 from two and 4-for-8 from three. No one else cracked double digits because Harper was out with the flu. Ace Bailey tried to single-handedly beat the Hoosiers, and he came up short. In their loss to Wisconsin, Harper was back, but he was limited to 15 ineffective minutes and didn’t score. Bailey went 2-for-11 from two, 1-for-5 from three, and Rutgers dropped the game, 63–75. Even when both freshmen are up and running, like they were in the loss to Princeton, they need both to score and score big. Harper put up 22 points, but Bailey only managed 15, and they couldn’t score enough to pick up the slack. They still put up 82 points, but when you play defense like Rutgers, that still might not be enough to win.

That’s not to say there isn’t talent elsewhere on the roster. Eastern Michigan transfer Tyson Acuff is an experienced scorer; in fact, he took 34% of EMU’s shots last season, good for 13th in the nation. He stepped up with Harper out early in the Big Ten slate and was the only bright spot against Wisconsin, putting up 17 points in their 75–63 loss to the Badgers, but it was an inefficient 17 that required 15 shots. Outside of the Big Two, Acuff is the only real shooting threat, hitting on 38% of his attempts.

They do have a solid piece on the inside with Lathan Sommerville, a massive 6’10”, 275-pound freshman who is capable of providing some scoring punch down low, but he’s mainly used as the screener, roll man, and designated rebounder on most sets. He could be a problem on the low block, but he’s rarely on the low block looking to score.

Overall, the game plan is simple: cut off either Bailey or Harper, and it’s pretty much a wrap for Rutgers. I expect Purdue to double Bailey any time he tries to back his way into the post. Sometimes Bailey’s talent gets in the way of his overall game. He can always get a shot up at 6’10” with a matching set of impossibly long, Kevin Durant-like arms, but that’s not always a good thing. He will bail the defense out with a contested perimeter shot instead of forcing smaller, less athletic defenders to deal with him in the paint. He should put up 8–10 free throws a game, but he’s only averaging 4.5 because he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty in the post. I expect Caleb Furst to draw the assignment early on Bailey, and honestly, I’m not sure who else on the roster, outside of TKR, has the ability to bother him on offense. Look for Furst to block off the paint and make Bailey shoot jumpers. Any jump shot, regardless of whether it drops or not, is a win for the Purdue defense.

Harper, at 6’6”, could be an issue. Purdue has struggled with big guards this season, and you won’t find a bigger point guard than Harper. The good news for Purdue is he’s another player that you can talk into taking the shot you want him to take. He’s attempted 69 threes, and while hitting 37% overall, has put up some clunkers in Rutgers’ losses. He went 0-for-1 in the Indiana loss, 1-for-6 in the Princeton loss, 2-for-6 in the A&M loss, 0-for-3 in their loss to Alabama, and 1-for-4 in their loss to Kennesaw State. In their big win over Penn State, he hit 3-for-6 from deep and poured in 4-for-7 in their win over Seton Hall. I’d rather have him shooting threes than getting in the paint, and I expect Purdue to offer him that option until he proves he can hit them. C.J. Cox has proven to be a tough defender, and I look for a battle of freshmen guards in this one, with Myles Colvin as his tag team partner.

If Purdue holds either Bailey or Harper under 20 points, it’s going to be tough for Rutgers to score enough—if Purdue brings their A or even B game with them to New Jersey.

Rutgers on Defense

The defensive end of the floor is where this young team struggles against good teams. Their overall KenPom stats on defensive efficiency are skewed because they played a laughable (albeit understandable) early-season schedule against a few teams that would struggle to score against a reputable Division II school, and those numbers have yet to wash out.

They’ve given up the following to teams inside the KenPom top 100:

• Notre Dame (88): 84 points
• Alabama (8): 95 points
• Texas A&M (14): 81 points
• Ohio State (30): 80 points
• Penn State (56): 76 points
• Indiana (49): 84 points
• Wisconsin (21): 75 points

They also gave up 83 to Princeton (113) and 81 to Monmouth (281).

Individually, they’re not bad defenders, but both Harper and Bailey will let you score before they risk getting into foul trouble. They play fairly standard man-to-man defense, and I’d love to see TKR get matched up with Bailey and bury him in the paint. Trey might have some difficulty scoring over the 6’10” freshman, but he should be able to score through him, especially if Bailey is in any sort of foul trouble. I expect Purdue to be physical with Bailey all game long, especially on offense, where Trey can use his ample rear end to create space.

Harper plays defense like he was born to play on the Boilermakers’ 2024 Final Four team. You would expect a hyper-athletic 6’6” guard to have a higher steal rate than 2%, but it makes sense when you see that he’s averaging less than two fouls per game. When Purdue has the opportunity to drive him with either Smith or Loyer, they need to drive through him and take away his space. Braden, in particular, needs to be smart with his pull-up because Harper’s long arms can close the gap on those types of shots in a hurry. Rutgers would prefer Braden to shoot pull-up jumpers all game because Harper will give way and let you get to the basket on drives in order to avoid a foul.

This is a game where I’d like to see less dribbling and more ball movement from Purdue because that’s another area where Rutgers tends to struggle. The more they move, the more mistakes the young team makes, and the more mistakes they make, the more easy buckets they give up. This Rutgers team wants to beat you by sheer athletic ability, and pounding the ball into the court gives them that chance. Princeton’s point guard, Xaivian Lee, put up 21 points and 11 assists in their upset win, and while Lee is an excellent player, Braden is one of, if not the, best point guard in the nation. If Smith is able to consistently run Purdue’s offense with a foot in the paint, Bruce Parkinson’s Purdue record of 18 assists in a game from 1975 could be in jeopardy—not to mention Mateen Cleaves’ Big Ten record of 20 assists.

(On an additional note, the fact that UCLA is included in the Big Ten’s record book before they’ve played in the Big Ten is dumb. Rick Mount still has the single-game scoring record with 61 despite Lew Alcindor putting up 67 points in a Pac-12 game against Washington State.)

Overall

The Scarlet Knights are a weird team. When you look at their advanced stats, they seem like a good team. When you look at their 8-7 record, they seem like a bad team. In reality, they’re a young, talented team whose individual parts are greater than the sum of their whole. If this game were played as a series of 1-on-1 matchups, I’m taking Rutgers all day. Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey are both athletic freaks with the NBA lottery firmly within their sights, and yet they have losses to Kennesaw State and Princeton on their résumé. That’s the problem with freshmen: by nature, they tend to be inconsistent, and Rutgers relies on two freshmen to be consistent in every game.

Purdue wins this game if they play together better than Rutgers plays individually on both ends of the floor. That’s been a strength of Matt Painter teams over the years, and while Rutgers is absolutely capable of winning this game on talent alone, as long as Purdue keeps their turnovers under control and doesn’t get beat up on the glass (they shouldn’t—Rutgers isn’t a good rebounding team either), I like their chances of picking up a road win.

Prediction

KenPom: Purdue 79 – Rutgers 74 (68% Confidence)

Drew: Purdue 87 – Rutgers 77

The sum of Purdue’s game beats out the individual brilliance of Harper and Bailey in this one. Smith runs the show to perfection, and the Boilermakers rain down open threes off dribble penetration. Just remember: if I actually knew how this game was going to turn out, I’d be living in Vegas.