A Basketball Season In Review - Forwards: Matt Frost
After giving a brief overview of what happened with the 2019-20 Purdue Basketball Season, let’s take a bit of a deeper dive into the different position groups and the individual players’ performance for the year. This isn’t going to be a game by game breakdown but more of a holistic view of each player and if applicable, what they need to work on moving into next year.
Now that we have covered every guard on the roster and their respective seasons, we will move onto the next position group, the forwards! In this group, we will cover the Senior Evan Boudreaux, Sophomore Aaron Wheeler, and Freshman Walk-on Matt Frost. I will also address this now in case anyone becomes confused later. Trevion Williams is listed on Purdue’s roster as a forward but he will not be covered in the forward’s section. He will be covered as a center. That being said, the forward position had a very hot and cold season as a whole. There were games where the forward position was one of strength and others where it was more of a detriment. What happened and what does Purdue need from it’s returning players to avoid the same happening in 2020-21?
Matt Frost
In 2019-20, Matt comes in as a freshman from Columbus East high school where he averaged 14.2 points, 6.2 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 1.2 steals, shot 53.4 percent from the field, and 73.5 percent from the free-throw line. Like many other walk-on players, he doesn’t see the floor too much and often make the biggest impact in practice.
The 6’5 forward saw the floor 9 times in 2019-20 totaling 17 minutes on the season. He ended up scoring 2 points against Central Michigan, and on the season going 1-2 from the field and 0-1 from three, he also pulled down 1 rebound in the home win against Michigan State.
Matt comes from a long family line of Purdue grads with 11 total Purdue graduates, including his brother who is currently attending Purdue. He sites choosing Purdue because “My whole family went to Purdue and growing up, it just felt like home.”
With such a lineage of Purdue alumni, Matt will no doubt bring the fight and grit of normal Purdue players. As mentioned in the article where I covered the guard walk-on players in the past, these types of players don’t typically get the fame or playing time of the scholarship players (Tommy Luce being the exception). These players do all the same drills, go through the same practices, go to all the away games, and try and take advantage of a few minutes a game if it works out that way. With this, as fans, we don’t see the value that these players bring and I for one will always express my gratitude to these players and all the hard work they put in!
Thank you for all your hard work, Matt! Keep up the effort and who knows, Mackey is looking for someone new now that Tommy is gone! Food for thought!
As always, Boiler Up, Hammer Down, Hail Purdue!
