{"id":201069,"date":"2026-03-22T04:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T04:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/201069\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T04:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T04:56:08","slug":"so-they-meet-again-purdues-trey-kaufman-renn-vs-miamis-malik-reneau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/201069\/","title":{"rendered":"So They Meet Again: Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn vs. Miami’s Malik Reneau"},"content":{"rendered":"

ST. LOUIS \u2014 This is college basketball today: Everywhere you turn, there\u2019s someone familiar, someone you might have played with or against, but now wearing a different uniform.<\/p>\n

For Purdue on Sunday against Miami, that player is Hurricanes forward Malik Reneau<\/a>, who faced the Boilermakers a half dozen times while at Indiana. Reneau transferred to Miami in his home state following IU\u2019s coaching change.<\/p>\n

(Miami also features guard Tre Donaldson<\/a>, who was at Michigan last season and faced Purdue twice.)<\/p>\n

Does it matter for teams preparing for NCAA Tournament opponents to have some baseline familiarity with their personnel? It can\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be an advantage in some ways, just knowing what each other is capable of,\u201d Reneau said. \u201cBut at the end of the day, it\u2019s about going out there, competing as hard as you can, and playing for the full 40 minutes. We\u2019re both going to have tough finishes around the rim, so it\u2019s about weathering that and continuing through the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Kaufman-Renn, it might matter more than most. His matchup with Reneau is the game\u2019s single most pivotal one.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny time you\u2019re familiar with a player, it helps, not just him, but guys like Tre Donaldson<\/a> as well,\u201d said Kaufman-Renn, who\u2019s played his best basketball of the season in the postseason, averaging a team-high 17.2 points on 68.4-percent shooting, with 10 assists in five games against just three turnovers. \u201cHaving that experience against them gives you an edge, especially in a tournament setting like this. At this stage, most players have a pretty defined baseline to their game. Guys may evolve \u2014 maybe shoot it a little more or handle it more \u2014 but a lot of what they do is still consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-9, 240-pound Reneau is different than the player Purdue knows from having played both power forward and center at IU, same as Kaufman-Renn has at Purdue. He\u2019s still a formidable post-up threat averaging a team-best 19 points on 55-percent shooting, but he\u2019s also become the capable floor spacer he never was at Indiana. He shoots 36 percent on an average of roughly two attempts per game. Perhaps he will be more inclined to shoot vs. Purdue\u2019s bigger frontcourt.<\/p>\n

\u201cPurdue has seen a lot of post-ups from me from my time at Indiana,\u201d Reneau said. \u2018But now, in this system, I\u2019m moving around the perimeter more, setting more ball screens, and getting involved in actions in the pocket. They haven\u2019t really seen me as a primary ball screener as much \u2014 more before it was isolation, where they could sit down and load up defensively. So it\u2019ll be a different style.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reneau said he knows he\u2019ll need to hold his ground on defense vs. Purdue\u2019s top front-line scorer.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to get to where he wants to get to,\u201d Reneau said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be able to wall up and not give him any angles. Make him play over the top of you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS \u2014 This is college basketball today: Everywhere you turn, there\u2019s someone familiar, someone you might have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-201069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}