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Breakdown: #3 Purdue's win over Maryland

No. 3 Purdue overcame both a 12-point second-half deficit and a strange finish to beat Maryland 62-61 Sunday in Mackey Arena.

Our breakdown.


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PDF: Purdue-Maryland statistics

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WHAT HAPPENED

At the end of his worst game of the season, at the end of one of Purdue's worst games of the season, Jaden Ivey came up big, again.

With 13 seconds to play and the game tied at 59, the Boilermakers ran a dribble hand-off for Ivey, 1-of-8 from the floor at that moment.

Purdue's All-America candidate isolated Hakim Hart, navigated the lane and scored with his left hand off the glass through a foul. The free throw put Purdue up 62-59.

"The whole game, I struggled," Ivey said, "but I want to win, most importantly. I was just trying to make sure we came out on top and got a win."

Then, the strange and unusual almost wiped away the whole thing.

After Purdue fouled by design with eight seconds left, trying to deny the Terps a chance to tie it with a three, Maryland wound up with a chance to win it, following a strange turnover that came from Sasha Stefanovic passing the ball along the baseline to Eric Hunter in an in-bound situation, after the clock was started incorrectly on a similar play prior. The referees blew that play dead because of the clock issue, but the second in-bound became a spot throw-in — it no longer followed a made basket — meaning Purdue couldn't pass the ball out of bounds or move on the baseline again.

"What I said (to the official) was, 'Are we re-doing this play?'" Purdue coach Matt Painter said. "The time was different, and I'm looking at our players to make sure they're going where they're supposed to go on the second (in-bound). To me, if we're re-doing this, we can still throw the ball along the baseline.

"That was my error, because that was a vague question instead of me saying, 'Can we run the baseline?'"

Trevion Williams and Mason Gillis turned disaster, though, into a funny story to tell, converging on Donta Scott around the rim, after Scott had taken an in-bound and spun baseline while running Gillis through an unintended same-team screen from passing teammate Eric Hunter.

Williams was credited with a blocked shot.

Gillis fell on the ball to seal the win.

"I kind of figured that was coming," Williams said of Scott getting the ball. "I did my best to just wall up and get a stop."

The dizzying final 20 seconds or so obscured an equally dizzying final 10 minutes or so, as Purdue looked cooked throughout much of the second half.

With 11 minutes to go, Donta Scott scored off one of Purdue's16 turnovers, putting Maryland up 48-36.

Then, Purdue's threes started falling, just in the nick of time.

Stefanovic connected, en route to a resurgent 5-of-9 game and a team-best 17 points. Then Eric Hunter. Stefanovic's second three in the span of about two-and-a-half minutes was followed by the Jaden Ivey free throw that capped a 14-0 Purdue run. Eric Hunter's three off Ivey's drive-and-kick assist put Purdue up 53-50 with six minutes left, before a back-and-forth stretch to follow.

Trevion Williams scored three field goals in the post in the final five minutes to carry Purdue down the stretch.

"He just got it deep down there and made some really nice plays," Painter said. "Traditionally he's been great in those four or five minutes of games. ... Give Trevion a lot of credit, because he did some really good things on the block (offensively) but also came over in help-side D, showed his hands and didn't commit that foul."

HOW IT HAPPENED

For 30 minutes or so, this was far from Purdue's finest hour, as the Boilermakers turned the ball over too often, lapsed defensively too often and struggled to make threes for the second game in a row, while Ivey never really got untracked against a defense that was able to create enough congestion to stymie his drives.

It wasn't until threes started falling that the worm turned in Purdue's favor, a reflection of a team that is prone to playing to the level of its shot-making.

"That's not a good thing," Stefanovic said when asked if Purdue's energy still correlates with its scoring. "It's something we need to keep working toward. We've struggled on the defensive end, which is something we're obviously aware of and something we're trying to fix and trying to get better with, to communicate better and do all the things that go into being better defensively.

"For us to be the team we want to be, to win a Big Ten title or whatever, that can't be the case."

The mood of Purdue's eight-minute, three-player post-game press conference was different. These are normally jubilant exercises following wins.

The mood for this one was very different.

"We know we can do a lot better," said Ivey, whose game-winner came on his 20th birthday. "Obviously we won, but we didn't play a perfect game, the game that we know how to play, offensively or defensively. We want to improve defensively. I think that's the biggest key for us. Offensively, our shots didn't fall today. They'll fall down the stretch, but it's defense where we have to keep dialing in and keep improving day by day and cleaning up our mistakes."

GAME GLANCE
Key Sequence Player of the Game Stat of the Game

Sasha Stefanovic's three with 10:46 to play came right after Maryland went up 12, but it was Eric Hunter's triple that followed that seemed like the moment this game changed. Those were the first six of 14 straight Purdue points.

Sasha Stefanovic had been in a shooting slump — by his standards — but his five threes were the difference in this game, and he made some easily overlooked plays on the defensive end in the second half too.

Purdue was 6-11 after halftime from three, four of them coming in the span of five minutes, turning the game. The Boilermakers' energy picked up when shots started going down.

WHAT IT MEANS

It didn't take long for it to be apparent that this was going to be a long afternoon for Purdue, and it just needed to find a way to win, then get out of here.

That's what happened. The Boilermakers have had a rough stretch, but were just good enough to do just enough to avoid a disastrous loss.

Give Sasha Stefanovic and Trevion Williams and Eric Hunter and Jaden Ivey a lot of credit for responding when their team needed them most.

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