In the Big Ten this year, the road has been particularly unkind

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They say that Big Ten championships are won on the road, but if that's true then this may be a season full of runners-up.

It's always difficult to win on the road in the Big Ten. History has shown as much time and again.

"The venues are off the charts," said assistant coach Steve Lutz, who coached at Creighton prior to Purdue. "We've all coached in different leagues, but the Big Ten is special in that regard. I've been at and played at a lot of places, and there's nowhere tougher to play than Mackey Arena, but that's true across the board (in the Big Ten)."

This season, however, it's been especially so.

As of Friday morning, 42 Big Ten games had been played, between the early December games and all those since the conference season resumed late last month. Six of them were won by the visitors: Michigan State and Iowa at Northwestern; Illinois at Wisconsin; Wisconsin at Ohio State and Penn State; and Rutgers at Nebraska.

Purdue's struggles away from Mackey Arena in Big Ten play — the Boilermakers are 0-3, with three losses of varying circumstances — hardly set it apart. Michigan and Ohio State, two of the darlings of the non-conference season, are winless away from their home floors. So is Maryland, a top-five team nationally earlier this season. Minnesota and Indiana haven't won a road game yet either, nor have projected league bottom-dwellers Northwestern and Nebraska.

For some context, last year Michigan State and Wisconsin were 7-3 In the league and Purdue and Michigan were 6-4. Purdue and Michigan State shared the conference title.

Right now, the likelihood of anyone in the Big Ten winning seven road games — or even six for that matter — seems like a lot to ask.

Prior to the season, you'd have called Michigan State the safest bet, the Spartans coming into this season viewed as one of college basketball's elite teams. They'll likely go on to have the great season most expected, but their last game, they scored only 13 more points (42) than they lost by (29) at Purdue, against a Boilermaker team seven days removed from scoring 37 points on a dubious school record of 25-percent shooting at Illinois.

Purdue's week, from getting blasted at Illinois to blasting the league-favorite Spartans, may just sum up the Big Ten this season and maybe explain home teams' dominance.

"I don't know what it is," Purdue center Matt Haarms said, "but maybe the lack of a truly dominant team in the Big Ten, a team that's just ripping it up wherever they go.

"Everyone has flaws, and those flaws are more easily exploited when you're on the road, because you don't shoot as well, and when you don't shoot as well, the true flaws in your team come out."

Shooting is key to road success.

As Indiana coach Archie Miller noted after his team shot 2-of-19 from three in a nine-point loss at upstart Rutgers, the three generally looms large in keeping visitors in games in hostile environments and can be critical to heading off the sorts of runs that spell doom in such settings.

IU is shooting less than 22 percent from three-point range away from Assembly Hall, but certainly isn't alone in those struggles.

Amazingly, the only teams in the Big Ten shooting better than 30 percent from long distance are the conference's two presumed bottom-feeders, Northwestern and Nebraska, as well as the Scarlet Knights, strangely.

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The league's worst three-point shooting team in Big Ten road games so far: Purdue. The Boilermakers have shot merely 21.1 percent away from Mackey Arena, more than 13-and-a-half percent below their success rate at home through a half dozen conference games. Iowa's and Ohio State's splits are similarly distinct.

Purdue coach Matt Painter, generally speaking, wouldn't necessarily chalk such things up to the actual making or missing of shots as he would a team's ability to run sound offense outside its comfort zone.

Anecdotal evidence exists, though, that Purdue's issues have been about simply making the shots. At Nebraska, the Boilermakers were 6-of-35 from three-point range, but made just 40.9 percent from two-point range, missing countless opportunities at the rim.

At Illinois, Purdue missed three-quarters of its shots, a lot of them at the basket.

Again, though, struggling to score on the road is not Purdue's issue alone.

While Purdue's 37 at Illinois stands as the Big Ten's single-game low this season, Michigan State's 42 in West Lafayette and Maryland's 49 at Iowa — the same Iowa team that gave up 103 to Michigan and 89 to Penn State — are eye-catchers, too. So was the 49 ranked Penn State put up at Wisconsin.

Whether scoring difficulties have anything to do with a deeper three-point line is anyone's guess. It's always been more difficult to score on the road regardless of the arc’s depth.

Painter, too, points to the league's balance, but also a few other related factors.

He suggests that pro-basketball defections from the league have contributed to its initial parity, especially some of the fringe-type players who left school and may or may not have even been drafted.

"Our game has had some quality players taken from it that shouldn't happen," Painter said.

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, he says the Big Ten's non-conference schedules are stronger now than they may have been in past years.

"I think we're more prepared to play in-conference," Painter said.

That may stand to reason, particularly when you consider that the early December sets of Big Ten games were higher scoring than those that followed, topped by hundred-plus-point outbursts by Ohio State vs. Penn State and Michigan vs. Iowa and Indiana's 96-90 overtime win over Nebraska.

"Good coaching and good players and unbelievable environments," Painter said. "There's no question the home team has an advantage."

Never more so than now, it seems.

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