Painter's first note-worthy recruiting class, last season all came from the state of Indiana. Four players all within the national top-100 who were home-grown in the Boiler state. He landed these four by seeking high basketball IQ guys and kept an eye on the AAU circuit. The '09 class, while smaller right now looks to have some similarities.
Indianapolis' Kelsey Barlow and Crawfordsville's D.J. Byrd are both solid verbals and like JJ and Hummel have flown under the radar a bit, until now. They were both named to the All-Indiana Junior squad. Another player on that team is highly-touted Van Treese who Purdue would love to add to that class. Van Treese's high school team mate, Jeff Robinson is already on board to wear black and gold in a few years.
One thing that is very obvious is that Painter works extremely hard on the recruiting trail and his hard work has paid off and will continue to yield big dividends. To me, most of these guys seem to be nearly perfect fits and are at the right level of player- just below the prima donna-type player that is a one-and-done, but still extremely athletic and talented. Time will tell as recruiting is an inexact science, but it's fun to watch Purdue's program rebuild the right way.