Dillon Thieneman Wins Yet Another Big Ten Freshman of the Week Award

In a year in which there have been many struggles on the field for the Purdue Boilermakers there have also been great surprises. The contributions of Dillon Thieneman may be chief among them. The third Thieneman brother has already earned a reputation as perhaps the best of the three and for good reason. He’s been Purdue’s hard hitting, and sure tackling, safety since the day he stepped onto campus. Coming in to make an impact in your first season is not easy. It’s a difficult thing for a freshman to do. Thieneman though has excelled. In the most recent game against Minnesota he led the team in tackles with nine and while you don’t always want your safeties leading you in tackles, it doesn’t look great for the defense, it provides no such tarnish of Thieneman himself who is doing everything he can back there.

Well, it turns out that Purdue fans aren’t the only ones who are noticing.

You can see it laid out right there in the tweet. No Big Ten defender has ever won the award more than twice and this will be Thieneman’s fourth time winning the award. Just an incredible honor for the young man. But, that’s not all! It gets even better. This could be a harbinger of future awards to come if past is any prologue.

The other two Boilermaker freshmen who won this award four times, Rondale Moore and David Bell, would later go on to win Big Ten Freshman of the year. Could that award be in the future for Thieneman? It sure seems like a distinct possibility. Thieneman has two more games to prove his mettle before awards are announced.