Purdue Needs To Get Back On Track, Looks To Rebound Thursday At Wisconsin
On Saturday night Purdue had planned to celebrate its league-leading 25th Big Ten Championship after beating Indiana in Mackey Arena.
The Hoosiers, however, had other ideas.
Behind Jalen Hood-Schifino’s magnificent 35-point performance, IU stunned the Boilermakers, winning in Mackey for the first time in a decade and sweeping the season series. As a result, Purdue didn’t get to celebrate winning a Big Ten title.
A day later, Purdue did celebrate clinching no worse than a share of the Big Ten crown when Northwestern lost at Maryland.
Winning a league title is a great accomplishment. After all, this Purdue team was picked to finish fifth in the league in the preseason after losing a majority of its offensive firepower, including NBA lottery pick Jaden Ivey from a team that finished 29-8 overall, 14-6 in the Big Ten (third place), and one that advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
This season’s expectations changed quickly in Boilermaker Land when Purdue, which was unranked in the preseason polls, jumped into the top five in late November after wins over Marquette, West Virginia, Gonzaga and Duke, and those high hopes continued as the team raced to a 13-0 start and enjoyed the best start in program history at 22-1.
Reaching the No. 1 ranking for the second consecutive season, only fueled the fire.
Junior center Zach Edey, all 7-foot-4 of him, established himself as the frontrunner as the National Player of the Year and barring something unforeseen is a lock to take home the best player in America honors, becoming the first Purdue player to do so since Glenn Robinson in 1994.
However, since Edey and Co. suffered their first loss to IU on Feb. 4 in Assembly Hall, the Boilermakers have faced adversity for the first time this season.
Purdue has lost four of its last six games and heads to Wisconsin Thursday for its last road game of the season.
The Kohl Center is never an easy place to win.
It’s sold out for the Purdue game.
And the Boilermakers should have pay back on their minds after getting swept by the Badgers last season.
It’s a game the Badgers probably have to win if they are to make the NCAA Tournament.
Since 2010, Wisconsin holds an 11-10 advantage over Purdue, going 7-3 in the Kohl Center. The Badgers have beaten the Boilermakers in three of their last four trips to Madison.
The stakes are high for Purdue, too.
The Boilermakers want to win the Big Ten title outright and will do so if they win one of their final two regular-season games (its home finale is Sunday against Illinois). Doing that would lock down the No. 1 seed in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament in Chicago’s United Center as well.
But there is more at stake for the Boilermakers. The next two weeks are huge for Purdue. It needs to win games … like win its last four prior to the Big Ten Tournament to reestablish itself as not only the league’s best team, but a team that can definitely end it’s 40-plus year Final Four drought rather than a team that might struggle surviving the first weekend of the Big Dance.
Purdue needs to get well between the ears. Without question, its confidence has taken a shot and the young Boilermakers (no seniors in the starting lineup and just one in the nine-man rotation) are shaken.
Edey continues to be remarkable.
The Toronto Tower, who notched another double-double with 26 points and 18 rebounds in the IU game, is averaging 22.3 points, 12.9 rebounds, 2.4 blocks and 1.5 assists per game. However, his turnovers have started to climb as he is averaging 2.5 miscues a game (the most of any time in his Purdue career). To be fair, though, Edey is playing more than he ever has (31.6 minutes per game, more than 12 minutes a game more than he did a year ago).
Purdue needs more scoring punch from Edey’s supporting cast.
Guard Fletcher Loyer is averaging 11.8 points per game. Pretty good for a freshman, but he’s been bothered by a calf problem and his shooting percentages have suffered.
Loyer hasn’t hit more than two three-pointers in a game in more than six weeks.
Loyer’s backcourt mate, freshman Braden Smith, is averaging just under 10 points per game, but when Purdue loses, it usually means Smith struggles shooting the basketball (at Maryland being the exception when he poured in 18 points on 8-of-12 shooting). Smith has only hit more than one three-pointer in a game once in nearly six weeks.
And it’s not all on Loyer and Smith either. Consistent contributions will be needed from Mason Gillis, Caleb Furst, Brandon Newman, Ethan Morton, David Jenkins and Trey Kaufman-Renn.
For this Purdue team, like most teams, it’s all about how well it shoots. If it hits shots, it can beat anyone in America. If it’s not hitting, it becomes very vulnerable.
In its five Big Ten losses this season, Purdue is shooting just 25.3 percent from long range (25-of-99 three-pointers) and 41.1 percent overall (109-of-265).
Even free throw shooting has been an issue for the Boilermakers in their losses. They missed 11 on Saturday in the loss to IU (some of those were front ends of one-and-ones). They missed seven at Assembly Hall and nine in the home loss to Rutgers in January.
In all honesty, when you look at the statistics from the latest loss to IU, it’s somewhat difficult figuring out how Purdue lost the game. After all, it outrebounded the visitors by 15 and shot 21 more free throws than the Hoosiers. With that said, Hood-Schifino was a one-man wrecking crew who on that night couldn’t be stopped and almost single-handedly willed his team to victory.
The trends in Purdue’s losses are obvious.
In the loss at Northwestern, other than Edey, Purdue made just 10-of-37 shots. In the loss at Maryland, Edey and Smith were the only players to score more than six points. In the home lopsided victory over Ohio State, Edey was the only Purdue starter to score in double figures.
In the latest loss to IU, Purdue players other than Edey made 14-of-46 shots.
It goes without saying that Purdue must shoot the ball better, but it’s really struggling with the high ball screen on defense. Edey needs to come up in the lane more away from the basket and the Boilermaker guards must fight through screens better or players who excel at beating teams off the bounce are going to have their way with Purdue.
The Boilermakers doubled IU All-American Trayce Jackson-Davis throughout the game and their guards didn’t get out quick enough to defend the three-point land which led to a lot of open looks and to the Hoosiers credit they knocked down nearly 50 percent of their triples (7-of-15).
TJD was scoreless in the first half, but IU only trailed by four at the break because Hood-Schifino was terrific.
“They didn’t go to him a lot because Hood-Schifino was playing so well, and rightfully so,” Purdue coach Matt Painter explained. “But if you told me he (TJD) would’ve had 10 (points) and eight (rebounds), I would think we would be sitting pretty.
“It kind of shows you how dangerous Indiana can be with that one-two combo there with Trayce Jackson-Davis and Jalen Hood-Schifino.”
The good news for the Boilermakers is they won’t face another consensus first-team All-American like TJD until likely deep into the NCAA Tournament and the same can probably be said about facing a player the caliber of Hood-Schifino, who is now a first-round lock for June’s NBA Draft.
In addition, Purdue remains No. 5 in the latest Associated Press rankings this week and is still a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament in all the bracketologist’s forecasts.
With that in mind, if Purdue is to be sitting pretty now as March is upon us, it needs to start a winning streak because come next week it’s one-and-done time, and after the season the Boilermakers have enjoyed, the last thing they want is early exits from the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments.
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