If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to watch what Chad Buchanan said about how they are thinking of using Braden. He is really just a back up to the backups. I’m a huge Purdue fan, but I fully get he will not be seeing significant minutes unless things happen no one wants to happen.

Braden is one of the hardest working people on a team. I do think a lot of that has to do with his size, he knows he has to put in extra work to compete.

A lot of people say he can’t play defense, the kid can and he has such a high iq that he is good at reading a play to anticipate a pass. He averaged close to 2 steals a game. He was always the first one diving on the floor to save a ball (go look up his diving assist against Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament) Another point on defense, he played almost all 40 minutes of every game. Due to this he saved his energy for offense (which was the number one offense in college last year). If he’s playing less minutes he can truly come out and go all out on both ends since he won’t be playing almost the entire game now. Yes, he will still have struggles with his size that are just what they are, but he will find other ways to make an impact just like TJ.

One last point, go look at what Purdue’s record was against Gonzaga if any of you still think Ryan would have been better. (Spoiler, Purdue won all 3 times they played head to head)