WEST LAFAYETTE − Purdue’s biggest preseason question isn’t who can score. It’s who will score the most.
Matt Painter has assembled a roster with so much firepower that the Boilermakers can’t easily identify a clear-cut leading scorer, or even the top two or three. That’s the kind of problem a coach can live with.
And among the names being floated, redshirt freshman Antione West keeps rising to the top.
Point guard Omer Mayer has seen it up close and didn’t hesitate to rave about what West did behind the scenes last season.
"I wish that people could have seen what he did in practices last year," Mayer said. "He's really, really, really good at basketball."
Mayer called West a "certified hooper just getting buckets."
West, for his part, isn’t backing away from the idea that he could finish the season as Purdue’s top scorer, even while acknowledging the Boilermakers may have a different leading scorer on any given night.
"Of course," West said with a laugh when asked if he could be Purdue 's leading scorer.
That confidence showed up in Purdue’s exhibition opener against Ball State, where West came off the bench and scored 11 points in 23 minutes. It also came with one obvious issue: he picked up four fouls.
That’s the balancing act with West right now. Purdue needs his scoring, but it also needs the defense that makes him so valuable in the first place.
He’s already one of the team’s better perimeter defenders, with length and size that separate him from the other guards on the roster. The challenge is learning where the line is.
"Antione is a heck of a player. I think he's special.
Special on both ends," Purdue associate head coach PJ Thompson said. "But I've been in enough college basketball seasons to understand it's a process, no matter how talented you are.
You're going to have highs and lows. He's got to learn how to play without fouling.
He's got to learn how to be an aggressive, elite defender without putting hands on people."
Thompson even sees pro potential down the road, projecting West as a future NBA player.
Still, if the fouls pile up, West’s minutes will be affected.
From a pure scoring standpoint, though, Purdue already knows what it has. CJ Cox said West was a problem for defenders all through redshirt season on the scout team.
"When he was redshirting and he was on the scout team, he was definitely a tough shot maker," junior guard CJ Cox said. "That's one of the things he's really good at is hitting those tough shots and scoring. We knew right away from there that he would be a big help for us this year and could potentially lead our team in scoring."
Mayer remembered those practices the same way, saying West regularly buried deep shots and forced the coaches to take notice.
"We had practices where he was on the scout team and he just made shot after shot," Mayer recalled. "The coaches were looking at us and we're like, hey, man, he's shooting from really deep and he was making them pretty consistently."
West expected to play a role last season, so the redshirt decision wasn’t an easy one. Painter was hesitant to use it, and West initially wasn’t on board either. But Painter has long preferred that players and staff reach a mutual agreement on that kind of move.
Once the season rolled along and West wasn’t seeing game action, the fight over the decision faded. He committed himself to the weight room and embraced the daily grind, knowing he wasn’t spending game days the way the rest of the rotation was.
That work brought its own payoff.
"It was definitely tough at first, but once I flipped the switch and got over it, I kind of just went to just working every day and putting in the time and knowing they had a plan for me and it was going to pay off," West said.
Now the next step comes Thursday, when Purdue heads to Fort Wayne for its second exhibition game against the Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons.
Thompson said West’s role will keep expanding, even if no one is ready to promise he’ll lead the team in scoring.
"He can be our most talented player. Does it equate to him leading us in scoring?
I don't know," Thompson said. "I am big on picking on advantages and each team presents different advantages for us to pick on, but he's definitely going to be involved and have the ball in his hands to decision make."
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