In their third game in a five-day stretch, our Boilers lost a game that they simply should not have lost. Coming into Wednesday night's contest v. Wofford, Painter's Boilers were 21-0 in Mackey against non-conference foes. Painter's noteworthy streak stopped at blackjack as Purdue simply couldn't put their opponent away.
I've spoken about how pleased I was with Crump during a few games this season. But other times (last game, and tonight's game), he's looked out of control and as if he simply doesn't know what he's going to do with the ball as he moves toward the basket. His lack of control sealed Purdue's loss tonight. Purdue had the ball with a little over a minute to play and a tie game. Crump dribbled inside the three, was trapped and threw the ball directly to an opponent...BEHIND HIM. This turn over led to the points that would keep Purdue at an arm's length until the clock hit 0:00.
Painter-coached Purdue teams seem to struggle mightily with rotating to defend the three...Tonight was no different and the open looks led to Wofford shooting over 50% behind the arc. Conversely, Grant, who had been hot couldn't shoot effective from outside 19.9.
This game felt a lot like the Lipscomb contest...but the final score makes this one a lot tougher to deal with. I really believe this loss could hurt Purdue badly if they're on the bubble come March...Hopefully, they'll grow up quickly during the BT schedule, but I'm not as optimistic as I was a month ago. Having the youngest starting five in the nation is an awfully tough thing to overcome...even when the four Freshman are a talented and humble group.
The effort was high on Wednesday, but both physical AND mental fatigue did our boilers in. One of our regular visitors said we could stop calling this group, "The Baby Boilers" and start calling them "The Toddler Boilers". Not so fast...I'm sticking with Baby Boilers.
The Wofford Logo is the only one in all of college sports that was designed on Microsoft Word