Listless Purdue Falls to Unimpressive OSU in Snoozing Venue, 68-52
Man, that was a bummer of a way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday. If you turned on Purdue expecting them to build on their recent ownership of OSU, including their last two in a row at Value City Arena, the quietest venue for a consistently good team in the nation, then you were disappointed.
If you figured they would show the fight and urgency that has seemed to be intermittent this season since their tourney hopes feel like they have to be on the line as we all lurch toward March in this weird-ass season, well, you were let down.
If you thought you had anything figured out about Purdue basketball in 2019-20, well, you’re only fooling yourself. Unless your posit is this is a good team at home that routinely crushes ranked programs but is somehow so befuddled on the road that they only score 52 points sometimes….well, okay, that’s a theory but how much sense does it make?
We’re now up to seven times Purdue has failed to score 60 points. They’re 4-6 vs ranked teams. They’re 2-0 against teams in the top ten at time of the game. They’ve lost five times by double digits. Paul Sabin from ESPN Analytics says, “The Boilermakers have the largest game to game variance in adjusted efficiency in the nation and it's not even close.”
I don’t know much about analytics but that seems to suggest that even those who use science to study this game can’t figure out anything about Purdue this season.
Some of this season’s losses you can talk yourself into being okay with. Losing on the road by a few points in the Big Ten isn’t a death knell, especially this season with the way the tournament field is looking. But losing the way they lost today can’t help the resume – they were really never in this game and Boilerdowd messaged our group chat with a truism about this year’s team, especially on the road: their formula seems to be to dig a massive hole, fight back and then run out of gas. Except today they never fully fought back, falling behind from the outset and never leading.
OSU went on a scoreless drought themselves in the first half, though, allowing Purdue to somehow escape to halftime only down 29-20. That lead extended to 16 within the first four minutes of the second half. Purdue only closed it to single digits one more time and OSU was never seriously challenged in the second half.
No matter what you may think, this was one Purdue really kind of had to have. Yes, holding serve at home will keep them afloat, but at only 14 wins currently, winning out at home (which is not guaranteed vs Michigan, IU and Rutgers) is anything but a guarantee. The remaining road games are Wisconsin and Iowa, so wasn’t this kind of the opportunity? To essentially not even show up is disappointing.
Evan Boudreaux continues his evolution into a more than serviceable Big Ten player. EB led Purdue with 17 points on 6/8 shooting, including 1/2 from deep and 4/4 from the line. With anyone else making their usual contributions, this would have been huge.
The only other Boilermaker to get into double figures was Jahaad Proctor, who scored 15 on 6/12 shooting. So the two senior transfers accounted for 32 of Purdue’s 52. Yikes.
Nojel had zero points, two rebounds, two assists and three turnovers.
Sasha had two points in 23 minutes.
Haarms had six points in 16 minutes, with four of them coming at the line.
These contributions are befuddling and spell an early end to Purdue’s season if they continue.
Purdue visits Matty’s favorite road venue on Tuesday, taking on the Badgers in Madison, following by three of four back in the friendly confines of Mackey. Most bracket predictions have Purdue somewhat comfortably in, though the two losses this week might put them into the last four in area. Gotta find wins.
