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| via Purdue Sports FB page |
Well it looks like the Boilermakers are back on a winning track, if you call it that. This evening they defeated Lamar 72-39 to get back to .500 on the season.
Tonight was by far the best this team has looked all season and I'm going to credit it to former walk on Dru Anthrop.
Anthrop played a career high 23 minutes tonight, and although you might not notice him on the stat sheet he was the spark that this team needed. Anthrop was fierce on defense tonight, diving for every loose ball, going after steals and wreaking havoc among Lamar's already poor offense. Although he only had three points he was able to really control Lamar with his four steals on the night. At one point in the game Kramer Anthrop even was on the ground swimming after a loose ball, not the first time we've seen that at Purdue.
Overall I thought the Boilers looked pretty good tonight. Purdue featured many different looks from and certain guys made an impact.
I thought the first half was the best half of basketball this team has played up to this point. They were taking good shots, not settling for quick three pointers and making Lamar pay in the post.
One thing that this team is establishing is the boards. I remember talking about this basketball team for a while now and every-time someone brought up Purdue they would always revert to the weakness of rebounding, not anymore.
Tonight Purdue grabbed 48 rebounds to Lamar's 30 and had 17 off the offensive glass. Purdue had six guys who had over five rebounds tonight, the guards are crashing the boards heavily.
One guy who looked good early tonight was Raphael Davis. Davis ended up with 7 points and 6 rebounds. Davis was driving and scoring baskets using his slashing.
Terone looked good once again scoring 16 points and seven rebounds. He was taking great shots at the beginning of the game and only took a few shots that seemed to be out of control tonight. Once again though he looked awful from the line going only 2-5.
Byrd didn't look great tonight. He passed up a lot of shots, in fact the official stat line says he was 1-1. Painter said in the post game wrap up that he should have taken a few more of those looks but he was just trying to do what the coaches have been preaching these past few days of practice.
Another guy worth mentioning is Hammons. AJ looked decent tonight scoring 13 points grabbing 5 boards and had an assist, a steal and 2 blocks. He was flashing to the post and overall it looked like the guys were looking to feed him the ball. He is going to grow up fast when it comes down to Big Ten time.
Purdue played the entire roster tonight and for pulling guys in and out quickly like Painter was doing it was hard to establish rhythms, but I believe this team is heading in the right direction. Some of the guys need to do more and play better without the ball, but that will come with experience.
The next challenge the Boilermakers have is to go on the road and face the Eastern Michigan Eagles on Saturday another test away from home for this young squad. EMU likes to play a zone so it will be a challenge to score for this team that has already had issues scoring this season. It should be an interesting and fun game to watch for the Boilermaker faithful, especially since we can all sigh a relief that our school has a football coach!