Boilers Gift-Wrap W At Nebraska
The worst thing about Delany Week, the time between finals and January when the Big Tenteen insists on playing conference games that nobody will watch because there are too many appealing alternatives on TV, is that it forces Purdue to play a couple of meaningful games at a point in the season when Matt Painter typically isn’t done getting things figured out for conference play. Also, the games are almost always on BTN, which sounds great until you realize that the average BTN production will remind you 20 times that home teams are unbeaten in conference play but won’t show a single stat about shooting percentage or fouls committed. (For as inconvenient as BTN+ is for those of you who aren’t subscribers, at least it’s clear that those are amateur telecasts. For all the money going into BTN, it should be a top-tier conference network with polished announcers and productions instead of being comparable to student productions.)
Sunday, Delany Week struck with a vengeance, as Purdue combined terrible shooting with lackadaisical defense in a 70-56 loss at Nebraska, a bad team missing one of its starters and giving first-half minutes to a walk-on. The Huskers’ offense is basically Purdue with no offensive rebounding: they came into the game shooting .333 from distance and .499 from inside the arc, but time and time again, a Nebraska player found himself open from three, even after they’d established that this would be one of the rare games where they’d hit some of those shots.
The Boilers actually made a game of it for a while in the second half - as is usually the case, Painter got some things sorted in the locker room, and Purdue got as close as two, on an Eastern layup from Haarms at the 8:13 mark. But Isaiah Thompson missed a three that would have given the Good Guys the lead, Nebraska hit a shot, and then their walk-on drove the lane, got fouled by Wheeler and knocked into Haarms’ legs, sweeping him off his feet and crashing him to the floor. Haarms stayed down for several minutes and was eventually helped to the locker room. The hosts ended up on an 18-2 run that put the game well out of reach.
The odd thing is that it wasn’t like there was one key stat where Nebraska blew out the Boilers; it was more like an across-the-board failure. For all the missed closeouts, Nebraska still shot only .367 from outside (11 for 30). The Boilers made a number of careless passes … but only had 9 turnovers. They shot .304 overall and .171 from three … but were within two late in the second half.
There were a couple of areas that did stand out, though. Fast break points went 17-6 to Nebraska. Purdue missed a number of layups, including a couple of transition shots that could have changed the complexion of the game. They also completely failed to capitalize on the post advantage they had with Williams and Haarms, as Nebraska committed only 9 fouls and the Boilers shot just 5 free throws. (It’s fair to point out that Big Tenteen refs are abysmal and likely missed a bunch of calls, but it’s also true that if you insist on jacking up a bunch of outside shots instead of feeding bigs in the post, you’re not going to draw many fouls anyway.) While some of that was the complete inability to hit outside shots, which allowed Husker defenders to collapse inside, some of it was the usual struggles that Purdue players seem to have in terms of finding open men in the post. If either Haarms or Williams is getting the ball inside regularly, maybe that makes a difference.
In any event, that’s over and we can pretend it never happened. Purdue resumes non-conference play with a rare road game, traveling to Athens to play The Ohio University (fortunately the game is Tuesday, so the roads ought to be clear by then). They’ll end the week with the Crossroads Classic, where they’ll face kenpom #12 Butler, before finishing their non-conference schedule against Central Michigan at noon on the 28th. Hopefully by the time Minnesota comes to West Lafayette on the 2nd, the Boilers will be shooting at regulation hoops instead of the carnival baskets they’ve seen all too often this season.
