Our Boilers faced Valpo tonight and notched the 11th win of this season. While Purdue's offense was pretty poor, the defense, even sans Kramer was pretty noteworthy as Purdue held Valpo to just 45 points. Early on, Valpo's energy was not at all matched...but their poor shooting was as our Boilers scored single-digits in the first 10 minutes of the contest.
Once again, the team shot poorly from the three point arc, but Smooge nearly shot 50% (while leading the team in scoring), and the crowd favorite, Buckets shot 75% from three point land while scoring 9 points...and playing pretty solid defense and hustle-minded basketball for good measure.
JJ seemed to struggle with the quickness of Valpo's big man Igbavboa, but got into double-digits in the scoring column and blocked 4 shots of the Crusaders brazen-enough to test him inside. The Ostrich shot very poorly, but led the team in rebounding. LewJack continues to grow up and make mistakes, but his pace and overall game is getting better each week. Kramer, who was out with a foot injury was missed defensively.
Not a ton of emotion seemed to go into this game for Purdue...but our Boilers won easily, in spite of sleep-walking through much of the first 25 minutes, as they looked ahead to this week's BT opener v. Illinois on Tuesday at Mackey.