Purdue Basketball Recruiting: No Okoro, No Problem

Guys, I know, it sucks.

The writing was on the wall weeks ago, when he started to string this out though, talking about how much he loves Nike, break neck reckless paced basketball, etc.

I am here to tell you first off, I am upset we didn’t close on this kid. But, sure go have fun at a school that is lesser in academia (even though he said he wanted the best education) and is in the worst Power 5 basketball conference, sure go have fun.

Rumor is Oregon is tell him he can play the three. If they do that, have fun having literally no perimeter play out of your win spot.

I am also here to tell you, if we did get him, we were playing dangerous. We would have had 4 scholarship centers, Williams, Dow, Haarms and Okoro. Since he announced last night, I went back and watched his film. Here, you can too - you will see the exact same thing.

He would barely be a 4 for us, with what we expect our 4 to do. We asked Vince Edwards to stretch and handle the ball, we asked Hummel to do the same thing. The offense would have looked a lot like Biggie’s first year, when it was all clogged up because he and Hammons couldn’t really shoot past 18 feet. Okoro is not like Vince or Hummel, not even remotely close - maybe a jumper will come but it will need to be developed.

Another I noticed, was his team plays a lot of 2-3 zone. That may have played into the decision as well. I am not sure what Oregon plays defensively, but Coach Painter asks a lot out of his big men defensively. I am sure he would have been fine with his athleticism. But, if Oregon plays some zone, that could have played a role in the decision as well.

He is an athletic finisher, he has no really strong post moves that separate him from our bi guys, he likes to get out and run in a reckless offense - AAU ball, hence the Oregon choice.

Did we really want 30% of our scholarships to be tied up into four, 4 year centers? I don’t think I did. We need to have flexibility at the other spots.

Lets not forget this part either. We have a play now stretch 4 coming to campus. Evan Boudreux will be here this summer and is more ready to play that void at the 4 spot than Okoro was going to be.

I understand, this is frustrating as hell. It seems like this is always happening. He chose the school that I guess you could say is “cool”. Well, like I said, good for him. I am fine rolling with Trevion Williams, Emmanuel Dowuona and Matt Haarms as the big men of this program.

There is no reason to sulk, it is time to look forward to next year. We are in great hands with Carsen, Boudreux, Haarms, Cline, Nojel, Wheeler, Tre, Emmanuel, Eifert, Sasha, Hunter and Tommy Luce. I refuse to be upset over someone we didn’t get when we have 12 great young men who will play hard and represent our university to the high standards we place on them.

Boiler Up, Hammer Down.