Recruiting - Purdue lands 2015 PG Grant Weatherford

Purdue landed its second commitment of the 2015 class this evening in 6'2" PG Grant Weatherford from Hamilton Heights high school in Arcadia, Indiana.

This is an interesting commitment in a lot of ways. As you can see above, Weatherford was being recruited by both Indiana and Purdue as a wide receiver in football and most expected that is the route he would take. All of the recruiting services have him profiled as a football player and really overlook him as a basketball player. He has obviously chose the basketball route though and has said he will not play both sports at Purdue.

Weatherford will bring a football mentality to the Purdue program which is exactly what Matt Painter is looking for. Think of what Chris Kramer brought to the Boilermaker program. If Weatherford can bring that type of mentality, he will certainly be successful in the long run. It is exactly what the current Purdue team is missing and every successful team has one or two guys that can bring that type of fight every day.

While there are not many videos out there from a basketball perspective, I was able to find this short video of Weatherford's game:

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The one thing that stands out in this limited look into Weatherford's abilities is that he has that bulldog mentality to always find his way to the rim. He seems very similar to Chris Kramer in that regard who was never much of a shooting threat or scoring threat for that matter. He played tremendous defense and was the most annoying player on the Purdue roster to deal with from an opposing team standpoint. I believe that is what Coach Painter is looking for out of Weatherford.

The opposing side of this argument is that Purdue now only has one scholarship remaining in the 2015 class on paper and they really haven't landed that certain impact player. While Ryan Cline can shoot from anywhere on the court, I don't think the Purdue fan base is too thrilled with how this class is working out thus far. The Boilers now have a couple low rated three star players (Weatherford actually isn't even rated for basketball purposes). Fans are looking for that headline commit, and there is really only one chance left for that in this class assuming the over sign is not used.

Overall, I think this commitment has a chance of working out very well for the Boilers due to the mentality Weatherford brings, but it certainly also may not work out and that is what really worries Boiler fans about this situation.