Purdue Basketball: Charleston Classic Grades

Nojel Eastern

Grade: B+

Why? Especially in the championship, it is evident how much we need Nojel Eastern on the floor for our Boilermakers. While he is the potent scorer that we want from a guard,he is clearly the best defensive player on the team right now. Over the course of the tournament, he did a great job on the defensive end of the court. Offensively, he wasn’t terrible either. Against App State, he did score 10 points on 5 of 8 shooting, something we need to see more often from Nojel.

Carsen Edwards

Grade: B

Why? Carsen scored when he wanted to this tournament. But, that doesn’t warrant an A from me. Defensively, he looked disengaged this tournament, especially last night vs a pretty darn good VA Tech team. He also turned the ball over way too much, again mostly against Va Tech. Carsen will fix the turnovers, but we need him to also fix the defense.

Ryan Cline

Grade: B

Why? Cline, our current number two scorer, is a must have on the court for floor spacing reasons. But, defensively, he tries his best, but he just is not a great defender. During the tournament he shot the ball pretty well for us, hitting a bunch of threes. My favorite part, Cline has decided he is going to get to the bucket now, where he has been pretty successful so far this year.

Grady Eifert

Grade: B

Why? The ultimate hustle player did just that during this tournament. Keeping plays alive and corralling offensive and defensive rebounds. Grady, when left open, has showed he can hit the three ball as well, especially from the corner where he hit a handful of this weekend. Grady is quickly becoming a vital part of this team.

Matt Haarms

Grade: C

Why? Haarms just wasn’t there last night, this is why his grade is low. We needed him last night and he failed to show up. He has shown he can be a good shot blocker, but I am not sold on his other aspects of defense. Sometimes, you don’t need to chase those shots to be in a better position to rebound. He will get better.

Reserves:

Evan Boudreaux

Grade: A

Why? The transfer may have been our best player this weekend. He crashed the glass on both ends and filled in great for Haarms when he got in foul trouble or was banged up. Evan has also looked pretty impressive on the offensive end, being able to hit a few threes and put the ball on the floor to get to the bucket. He has been great early on.

Aaron Wheeler

Grade: C

Why? Another player who seemed to struggle on the defensive end of the court this weekend was Aaron. You would think his length would bother shooters, but this weekend it really did not. He also was pretty limited on offense.

Sasha Stefanovic

Grade:

Why? Sasha seems to be finding his shot. He hit a few threes last night, but again, we have another player who was exposed defensively. Sasha just isn’t up to speed yet with the rotations, where his player got several open shots.

Eric Hunter Jr.

Grade: C

Why? Hunter did not play as much this tournament as I thought he would. When he did play, he really was not that great. The upper classmen he faced kind of beat him up. In fact, Sasha was coming in over him with the early bench rotations last night. We will need Eric to be better, as we need another ball handler on this team.