Purdue Makes Alec Brennan's Top Eight

Alec Brennan, the 2014 four-man is 6'9", 235 pounds and ranked a 3-star prospect on Rivals, which says he has 12 offers. He recently released -- via twitter, of course -- his "top 8 in no order," and Purdue was on the list. I'm not sure how much stock you can put into a top eight list, but I suppose this particular list shows where his priorities lie:

• Harvard
• Princeton
• Yale
• Brown
• Purdue
• Wake Forest
• Davidson
• Stanford:

Interestingly enough, Rivals doesn't even have Stanford listed as showing interest, let alone offering a scholarship, so I'm not sure how they fit into this list (though he did take an unofficial visit their last winter). Schools that have offered and aren't on the list are: Iowa State, Maryland, Kansas State, Northwestern, Temple, Seton Hall, Vanderbilt and Rutgers. Clearly Brennan is putting an emphasis on academics over athletics with the schools he's put at the top of the list. Normally I would say against those schools Purdue might have the best shot based purely on the basketball tradition, but with a list like that I'd venture to guess an Ivy League education might be a bigger draw for him. (And please, please don't say, "Some people think Purdue is in the Ivy League!" While true, some people also think 9/11 and the Holocaust didn't happen. That doesn't mean they're right.)

Brennan is still a little rough and I'm not entirely sure he's on Purdue's front-burner, based on who else they're recruiting for that class, which seems to be a much more "ready" type of player like a Vince Edwards or Issac Haas. However, Matt Painter spoke in the last week about wanting to take a five-man 2014 class if possible, so maybe he's factoring in more of a "project" player for that fifth spot?

He did visit Purdue unofficially last summer, and Purdue's coaches tried then to sell him on how they would use him on the offensive end, which sounds a lot like how they used Robbie Hummel in his younger years.