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It may be the biggest compliment you can pay to a point guard: “You feel safer and more confident because you’re in the game with that guy.”
That’s what junior Braden Smith offers Purdue basketball, according former Indiana coach Tom Crean, who joined 107.5 The Fan on Thursday morning.
Smith reminds Crean of a former Hoosier he coached from 2012-16.
“That’s what Yogi (Ferrell) did,” Crean said. “It wasn’t until later in his career when he realized that he truly understood that he wasn’t going to be great if everybody else didn’t feel good about it and wasn’t successful, too.”
Smith has played in 92 Purdue games, dishing out 607 career assists, 83 from Bruce Parkinson’s school record. Smith is averaging 6.6 assists per game, leading the nation in overall assists for the second straight season. He has an 11.7-point scoring average.
Ferrell played in 137 games, compiling a school-record 633 career assists and averaging 14.5 points.
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“There’s a level of toughness. There’s a level of determination, a level of awareness and basketball IQ that’s enormous,” Crean said of Smith. “But there’s a level of skill that continues to increase, and he keeps adding to his game.”
Crean said Smith made his impact on the Boilers sooner than Ferrell did with the Hoosiers, but Ferrell earned All-American honors as a senior and played parts of five seasons in the NBA.
“He’s going to make the NBA,” Crean said of Smith. “You can’t find enough guys who can do (what he does).”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue basketball’s Braden Smith reminds Tom Crean of Yogi Ferrell