Keep shooting: Ryan Cline breaks out of slump in Purdue's blowout win (2024)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Ryan Cline felt a breakout was coming.

Cline was 5-of-8 from 3-point range and 7-of-11 overall to finish with 19 points and four assists, complementing a 30-point barrage by All-America guard Carsen Edwards as Purdue beat Ohio, 95-67, on Thursday night and improved to 7-5. In helping the Boilermakers break out of their own 1-4 slump, Cline was on point with his jumper whether he was open or on the move, and he even scored a couple of times off the dribble at the rim for good measure.

“There were times when my teammates were getting me open,” Cline said, “and just getting me good looks.”

The Purdue senior has been relying heavily on the 3-point shot for his entire basketball life, so he’s been through enough slumps to know they do end. Just last season he started 4-of-23 from beyond the arc, failing to make more than one 3-pointer in any game in November. Then after playing 15 minutes without taking a shot in a win at Maryland, he hit at least two 3s in each of the next five games, making 13 of 21 from beyond the arc.

So Cline felt no reason to panic after making just 4 of 24 treys in the Boilermakers’ previous three games. He watched film and saw times when he was fading back too much, not using his legs enough in his shot and producing an arc that was a little too flat. He already felt as if he had that fixed in the second half against Notre Dame on Dec. 15, when he hit three 3-pointers after making just one of his previous 19, and his performance in Thursday night’s win made it clear that he had.

Coach Matt Painter wasn’t nervous either. He has been watching Cline make 3s for more than half a decade, going back to his days recruiting the 6-foot-6 wing when he was starring at Carmel (Ind.) High School. Before the slump started, Cline had made 31 of his 68 3-pointers on the season, so Painter knew Cline’s water would eventually find its level.

“When you deal with good shooters, it’s the law of averages,” Painter said.

The conundrum facing Purdue, however, is that its offensive success is perhaps problematically dependent on the law of averages on 3-pointers working out in its favor. According to KenPom.com, 48.4 percent of the Boilermakers’ field goal attempts come from the 3-point arc. That ranks 16th nationally. Villanova, typically the most perimeter-oriented big-time program in the nation, is the only major conference program that ranks higher, checking in at No. 3, with 51.8 percent of its shots coming from 3-point range. The next closest Big Ten team is Nebraska, which ranks 104th, at 41.5 percent.

The Boilermakers are even more dependent on how the law of averages affects Cline. After Edwards, who ranks in the top five nationally with 26.0 points per game, Cline is far and away Purdue’s second-best scoring option with 13.9 points per game. The Boilermakers don’t have a reliable third option.

Dartmouth transfer forward Evan Boudreaux is the team’s third-leading scorer with 8.2 points per game, but he hasn’t finished in double figures in the last five games. He scored three points on Thursday night, marking the fourth time in those five games he had scored three points or fewer. Sophom*ore center Matt Haarms, the fourth-leading scorer at 7.3 points per game, had just four against Ohio and has scored more than 10 points just once all season.

So Purdue is dependent on Cline, and Cline is dependent on the 3. Exactly 100 of the 134 field goals he has attempted and 40 of the 60 he’s made have come from beyond the arc. Cline has attempted at least five 3-pointers in every game, and three times in Purdue’s first dozen games he has been in double figures for attempts. That’s fine: Cline is one of the best 3-point shooters in the Big Ten, and he ranks second only to Edwards in the conference in 3-pointers made. However, the fact he is such an offensive priority for the Boilermakers also means he’s one of the focal points of opposing defenses, which means he very rarely gets a 3-point look that isn’t contested, which naturally has an effect on his efficiency.

“He makes tough shots and he can make some contested ones,” Painter said. “But if you shoot a lot of contested shots, that doesn’t bode well.”

It doesn’t, but with the players the Boilermakers have, there’s only so much they can do to change that dynamic. Fortunately for them, Cline has been training for this role his entire life.

Cline’s father, Mike, was a two-year captain at Ohio State who shot 45.3 percent from the field (before there was a 3-point line) and 81.9 percent from the line, yet he still wasn’t the most accomplished basketball player in his immediate family.

Mike’s younger sister, Lisa, was a four-time All-Big Ten selection at Ohio State, earning conference player of the year honors as a senior in 1989 and leading the Buckeyes to three Big Ten titles and four trips to the Sweet 16. That was after she won two state titles at West Holmes High School in Millersburg, Ohio, setting school records for points in a season (1,034) and a game (76). She’s in the Ohio State Hall of Fame and the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame.

“I always tell people I left Ohio because I was known as Lisa Cline’s brother,” Mike says with a laugh.

Mike’s wife, Micki, didn’t play, but her brother, Jim Shannon, did. He’s the coach at New Albany (Ind.) High School, where he coached Indiana freshman phenom and McDonald’s All-American Romeo Langford.

So Ryan was born into a family that was obsessed with basketball, and he embraced it. Starting in second grade, he was a regular at training grounds such as the Indiana Basketball Academy and Champions Academy in Indianapolis. It became clear he had the same gifts as a shooter that Mike did. When he was 13, he won the Elks National Hoop Shoot championship, a national free throw competition.

“He was never super quick or a real leaper,” Mike says. “But he could always shoot the ball.”

That skill alone accelerated his path at Carmel High School. Even though he was tiny as a freshman — about 5-foot-6 and 130 pounds, he says — coach Scott Heady put him on junior varsity.

“He could shoot the ball,” says Heady, now the coach at Division II Marion University. “He couldn’t defend a lick or anything else. I can remember debating with our coaches. ‘Body wise and physically, can we move him up and play him on the JV?’ So just after watching him in preseason, it was evident even though he was physically not quite ready, skill-wise he was ready to at least be challenged at a higher level.”

It was a challenge for Cline, but he was also a challenge for the varsity team.

“The varsity team just hated me,” he says. “We’d do these drills and we’d get down to the last couple of seconds and they need one more stop, and I’d hit a crazy 3.”

Cline even got a cameo on the varsity team as a freshman and played a minute in the state championship game when Carmel knocked off Pike to claim its first state title since 1977. He had a growth spurt before his sophom*ore year, to about 6-2, and he started on the varsity and hit three 3-pointers in the state championship game to help the Greyhounds claim a second straight title.

“He played with four or five other smart players who were all juniors and seniors who were experienced players, so we put him in the corner, spaced the floor and let him shoot 3s,” Heady says. “He was really good at it.”

But after his sophom*ore year, Cline couldn’t do that anymore. For one thing, everyone knew they couldn’t leave him by himself in the corner. For another, Carmel’s star point guard, Michael Volovic, had graduated and headed to play at Butler (before transferring to Florida Southern). So Heady moved Cline to the point.

“He has the ball in his hands right away,” Heady says. “It’s not like you have to get the ball to him in the half-court where they can deny him the ball. He could bring down the floor, we could do some things right away, and then he gives it up and we’re getting him open and running him off screens. Him handling the ball and having to make decisions, it helped his leadership, it helped him develop as a player. It helped his passing, it helped his ball-handling. But it was also good for us because we kept the ball in his hands a lot. He worked on getting open and how to get separation.”

Cline developed into one of the better players in the state. As a junior, he averaged 16.9 points per game and was named an Indiana Junior All-Star, which helped draw him a scholarship offer from Purdue. He committed to the Boilermakers in June, and as a senior was runner-up for Indiana Mr. Basketball to future teammate Caleb Swanigan. Cline averaged 21.0 points per game to go with 5.1 rebounds and 5.0 assists while earning player of the year honors in Indianapolis’ loaded Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference. He led Carmel to the regional finals, where it lost to Swanigan’s Fort Wayne Homestead squad.

By that point, Cline could shoot off the dribble and off screens, and he was nearly automatic if he was left open. He also showed a willingness to adapt to the situation.

“He’s no question the best shooter that I’ve ever coached,” Heady says. “He was willing to make changes in his shot. A lot of kids don’t, especially when they’ve had success. Even when he was a freshman and sophom*ore, his shot was lower. He changed his shot later in his senior year and really got it off a lot higher. The next step was to get it off quicker. He was not only a kid who would get in the gym a lot — and he was in the gym more than anybody — but what separated him and made him a good shooter was that he was willing to change technique-wise, where a lot of kids don’t.”

Cline had expanded his game to become not only a better shooter, but he’s also better off the dribble, a better passer and even a better defender. At Purdue, however, he didn’t have a chance to apply a lot of that until this season.

For Cline, this season feels a lot like his last two seasons at Carmel in terms of responsibility, but that makes the defeats the Boilermakers have already suffered hurt all the more.

“There have been some games when you haven’t been able to close out, and you obviously have to blame the older guys with the experience,” he says. “Me, Carsen, Grady (Eifert), we obviously have enough experience to be able to win those type of games. And we just haven’t been able to close a couple of those out. It’s obviously difficult, because I feel like throughout my career, I’ve won a lot of games, and I feel like I’ve been the reason I’ve won a lot of games. But just going down to one possession, one breakdown can obviously lose you a game. And it stinks.”

As a top substitute the first three seasons, Cline got to enjoy contributing to wins — and there were many — without having to take as much responsibility for the losses, which were few and far between.With P.J. Thompson handling the point guard duties, Edwards playing shooting guard, Dakota Mathias playing the small forward spot and Vincent Edwards at power forward, there wasn’t a starting spot to be had, so Cline came off the bench to be mostly a catch-and-shoot option. With Thompson and Edwards creating havoc off the dribble and center Isaac Haas consistently drawing double-teams in the paint, the open shots were plentiful, and Cline took advantage. Shooting almost exclusively from beyond the arc, he hit 42 3-pointers as a freshman, 45 as a sophom*ore and 40 as a junior.

“Especially having a guy like Isaac in there, he’s such a force, and whenever he gets the ball five feet from the basket, he’s going to make the shot 75 percent of the time,” Cline says. “Defenses need to pay so much more attention to that. Having him be the focus of their defense will obviously open up a lot of other options. Not having a 300-pound, 7-3 guy after playing with him the last three years has been an adjustment. I don’t think people realize how big of a force he was in college basketball.”

Cline has nominally stepped into the role held by Mathias, but with Haas, Edwards and Thompson also gone, he is in a much different situation. Opponents would occasionally lose Cline on the floor and he would get open in the corner while they scrambled trying to deal with the rest of Purdue’s firepower.

This year, however, it’s almost impossible for Cline to get lost. Edwards certainly draws lots of attention with his ability to hit shots from 30 feet and beyond and blow by defenders off the dribble. But when Edwards breaks down the defense, Cline’s defender generally doesn’t sag off to help because it’s better to let Edwards get to the rim for two then have him kick out to Cline for an automatic 3.

And beyond Edwards, Purdue doesn’t have another player who draws multiple defenders in the paint. Boudreaux and Haarms are capable centers, but neither can bully defenders and demand double-teams the way Haas did. Sophom*ore point guard Nojel Eastern can get to the rim, but he only does so occasionally and is averaging about four field goal attempts per game.

So rare is the occasion when Cline doesn’t have a defender attached to his hip.

“I think Michigan might have left me once or twice, but Maryland didn’t at all,” Cline says. “I accept the challenge, because I feel like the other team has respect for me and I have to show them why they need to respect me.”

Mike Cline would like to see his son take his defender to the rim more often. He doesn’t have nearly the speed Edwards has, but he has decent athleticism, an adequate handle and an ability to finish, especially in isolation situations. Ryan has made 20 of his 34 2-point attempts this season, and a number of those have come at the rim.

“I practiced the spin move, the Euro-step, what I call the swoop step, I practice these things with him millions of times,” Mike says. “I know he can do it. He finally made a pretty quick spin move about four or five games ago, and you can ask my wife, I was so excited. I was so much more excited about that than him scoring 19 points. Hefinallydid some things we’ve worked so hard on during the years. When he’s warming up, all he does is stand out there and shoot 3s. I’m like, What are you doin’? Why don’t you do these other things warming up? You can get your own shot. You just don’t show anyone you can do it.”

Ryan appears at least to be warming to the idea. He drove and made two shots at the rim on Thursday and also hit a floater in the lane that was waived off because he was called for a charge. However, he also had one swatted away when he drove into the teeth of the Ohio defense, which served as a reminder that he still has to be smart about picking his spots. He already has attempted more free throws (eight) than he took all of last year (six).

“You see an opening and you see an opportunity for yourself and you just take it,” Cline says. “It’s not like I’m even thinking out there. It happens. I feel like I’ve developed a pretty good floater game or whatever people are calling it nowadays. and just being able to take it to the rim, I finally am shooting a couple free throws a game. Maybe one or two. Better than last year.”

Still, the 3-pointer is Cline’s bread and butter, so whether he’s well defended or not, the Boilermakers need him to keep shooting. Their first priority is to do what they can to get his defender away from him so he can at least get a few open looks.

“It’s your execution,” Painter says. “You have to get offensive rebounds and kick-outs. You have to get a transition 3. Then your execution in the half court. You try to get some dribble penetration, penetrate and pitch 3’s. We run sets trying to get him open, whether it’s baseline screens or dribble handoffs or side out-of-bounds, we run a lot of stuff trying to get him that look.”

But sometimes those looks don’t come, and Cline simply has to create space off the dribble and make shots.

“If you can just shoot when you’re standing still, that’s one thing,” Painter says. “You have to be able to move and shoot. Both of our guys (Cline and Edwards) are really good at moving and shooting. We really try to work towards going hard in practice and cutting hard in practice and making those game-speed shots so it’s second nature.”

Of course, even when it is second nature, there are still games when the shots simply don’t go down. With the Purdue offense being what it is, however, Cline knows his job is to keep shooting until they do.

(Top photo:Steven King/Getty Images)