FanPost

Friedrichsen Commits


At one point in time, it appeared that there was a decent chance that Parker Friedrichsen (a junior from Bixby, OK) was going to end up at Purdue. Coach Painter made at least two visits to Oklahoma to meet with him and watch him play and Parker made a visit to WL as well from my understanding. However, things seemed to cool off last spring between the two sides and then Parker officially committed to Oklahoma State last spring. A few weeks later, he suddenly decommitted and reopened his recruitment. Nebraska jumped on him hard again. At that point, Purdue was pretty much out of the running as we all saw that Painter had a few other fish on the line as well. Basically, Parker didn't make up his mind quick enough and Painter went another direction. I can't blame either side, Parker has to feel comfortable about his choice and Painter needed to get a commit from someone so he wasn't left holding the bag at the end of the day. Last week, Parker narrowed his choices down to his top three: Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Davidson. I'm not sure when Notre Dame got into the mix and I was actually surprised to hear they were. Word is, even as late as the end of last week he was a heavy Nebraska lean. He has family connections there. However, today, he officially chose Notre Dame. While I can't say I am happy about that given our fanbases distaste for the Irish, I can say I'm happy I don't have to openly root against him twice a year when Purdue plays Nebraska. For what it's worth, they are a fine academic institution and he will get to play at cool places like Duke, NC, Virginia, etc. and be seen on TV quite a bit. With the unstable conference alignments, it could be that ND ends up in the Big Ten at some point and he does play against the Boilers. Anyways, just wanted to give an update on his status. I will always be grateful to him for allowing me to meet and visit with Matt Painter and get my picture taken with him.

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