The Cup's half full?

via grfx.cstv.com

We (Purdue Fan's) need to stop looking the negative aspects of Robbie Hummel's injury, it happened, he has moved on and the team has moved on.  Despite what the media says this is still a year to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament, but this is not another article about this year this is looking forward to the future, yea everyone is talking about going back in time (to October 18th) but lets talk about next year.

2011-2012 Season:

Robbie is back after taking a full year to heal, after a year of R&R he is ready to get down to business.  Robbie is not only a great scorer and defender, he is a leader!  Now that we have the leader back lets talk about his troops.

Lewis Jackson and Ryan Smith will both enter there senior year.  Okay that all right (you might be saying right now) but so what!  Stay with me this is where things start getting really exiting!

Coming in to there Junior Year with 2 years of playing time under there belts are Kelsey Barlow, D.J. Byrd, John Hart and Patrick Bade.  Hart in is going to become a scoring threat he has all the skills there, the confidence level will come.  Barlow will be a lock down defender.  Byrd can make it rain from down town and bang around underneath the basket.  And Bade well I have a feeling after the 2010-2011 year we might be calling him Hummel Jr.  So, now your probably saying wow we are going to have a good team next year.  Guess what!  I'm not done!

Now enter the returning sophomore class with now 1 year of Big Ten basketball running in there veins Terone Johnson, Anthony Johnson, Travis Carroll, and Sandi Marcius.  From what I have seen of Terone Johnson is very impressive, he is going to be a great player for many years to come, he can play both ends of the floor and he has a good basketball IQ.  Carroll and Marcius will continue to grab rebounds and provide us the big bodies under the basket, Carroll will (hopefully) comeback with a bit more muscle.  Well the pretty much wraps up the outlook for next years team.  Wrong!

2011 Freshman Class Donnie Hale and Jacob Lawson two athletic forwards that are getting a lot of attention at the high school level.  Both are scoring threats and will give us a shoot blocking and rebounds.

If you have followed Purdue Post season play you know the one thing that has punched our ticket home from the tournament each year, our lack of size (UCONN and DUKE).  Here are the number for next year,  Hummel (6-8), Bade (6-8),  Carroll (6-9), Marcius (6-9), Hale (6-8) and Lawson (6-8), I don't think size will be Purdue's problem next year, it might be figuring out who will start!

So as you watch this season and the cameras cut to Robbie Hummel sitting on the bench (150 times per game min).  Remember this article before that tear rolls down your eye.