With 1 senior on roster, Purdue's junior guards will lead team

Even before their Final Four banner is hung in the dark rafters of Mackey Arena, they're back to the start. To square zero.

"It's go time now," junior guard Fletcher Loyer said at Purdue's first practice of the new season Tuesday. "It's something special we did for this school, for coach, this town, but we didn't win. So I think we are all hungry to go back, win another Big Ten championship, make another run in March, go back to the Final Four. "

Loyer, perhaps more than anyone, has a reason for wanting to wash out the sour taste of Purdue's National Championship clobbering to Connecticut. He played probably the worst game of his career – 0 points, a career low, despite 30 minutes played. His only positive contributions to the box score were two rebounds and a steal.

"I can't be the fifth option sometimes," he said. "I gotta move up. I gotta get better."

The stick-thin, sweet-shooting guard was a player fans loved to hate last season, as social media comments (and, as Purdue's stage got brighter, TV analysts) questioned his output given his large share of playing time. His Wikipedia was once changed by a prankster to say he was known for his "flopping and feminine traits," as a Reddit poster on r/Purdue pointed out. Loyer said Tuesday that he had deleted X.

The peaks in Loyer's game can feel different; when he's on, he's sending 3s in straight and true with his whip-action jumper, and pounding his chest and sending spit flying after. He's the picture of hoops joy. When he's not, his defensive limitations and rather shallow bag of tricks can hold him back, like against the Huskies' vaunted guards. The 180-pound guard looked thicker in the neck Tuesday, and said he'd been working on adding weight.

"Just like anybody, you want to get better," he said. "When you see that's something in your game that you can improve on, You can get more athletic, it'll help you be a better defender, help you be a better ball handler, help you get to the rim better. That's why I wanted to do it. My goal is to play in the NBA, so I'm gonna do whatever I can to get there. I think by me getting stronger, helping this team win more, that'll help me do it."

There's new opportunity for the ones moving up. Four influential seniors are gone: Ethan Morton's spot-defense and leadership, Mason Gillis' gritty shooting and rebounding, Lance Jones' fearlessness and burst-scoring, and Zach Edey's two-way impact that ranked among the greats of the sport. And, more recently, the roster opened up even more when Purdue announced four-star recruit Kanon Catchings would go elsewhere. That opened up an even greater role for the two players on the roster who spent most pf their time guarding opponent's small forwards, sophomores Myles Colvin and Cam Heide.

Colvin said he's spent the last two months in Miami going through pre-draft workouts with players from his NIL agency who plan on going pro, focusing primarily on his ball-handling.

"That's my focus, just to relieve pressure from the point guards and (junior point guard Braden Smith) and all them," Colvin said. "And I want to be a playmaker for myself and others, so that's huge. And just working on my ability to just score off the dribble. I think that that's something that I didn't do last year just because of having Zach, all the attention to him and having those open shots, that's what I took."

Smith is now the most-accomplished player on the team, with an All-American honorable mention nod from last season. With five freshmen coming in and only one senior in Caleb Furst returning, it's the point guard's team now.

"I think being a better leader is my biggest thing," he said. "Being able to talk through with these younger guys and help them the best that I can. So just being that kind of vocal guy."

Smith was asked whether the standard is higher now. His reply?

"Always is."