When you look at that record and our schedule, its hard to think 22-9 will even get us an NIT birth, let alone an NCAA. I just do not see us as a ball club that can go and win more than half of our road games either, so your prediction of getting 4 is reasonable. We were a .500 team in the A-10 last year, and half of those games were at home!
Purdue was a team last year that was very young. They started started 2 freshmen, 2 sophomores, and 1 junior college player for their Big Ten play. They went 6-3 on the road in the Big Ten and 9-0 at home. It's not out of the realm of possibility to do well on the road, but it's something that UD has not been able to do well recently.
I think the major problem is that our set style of offense clashes with our player's make up. That of course coupled with our horrendous free throw shooting. The difference between Matt Painter (Purdue's coach) and
Brian Gregory is that Matt Painter recruits guys who can shoot, not so much the athletic players that BG does.
We ache and groan about how the free throw shooters need to practice more, but practice can only do so much. Some of these guys that we are getting are freaks in the gym and on paper, but definitely aren't as well groomed as players as other teams are getting. We have noticed that even after 2 or 3 years of "being groomed at the college level" still hasn't improved these guys shots. When Brob came in, he could flat out shoot and score. Others not so much, and they have not gotten better. I think its time that BG change his play calling approach or at the type of players he is recruiting before we can reasonably become a road warrior and thus an NCAA worthy team.
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