Breakdown: #4 Purdue's win over Northwestern

Playing without leading scorer Jaden Ivey, fourth-ranked Purdue handled visiting Northwestern with relative ease Sunday in Mackey Arena, 80-60.

Our breakdown.

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Don't think for a second that Purdue didn't miss Jaden Ivey — sidelined by a hip flexor that nearly idled him for the Indiana game, also — against the Wildcats. He's one of college basketball's elite players and carries immense influence on this Boilermaker team.

But without him, the Boilermakers played well. Real well, actually, against a team that's middling this season, but has jumped up and bitten some people on the road before.

"He's such a crucial part of our team and we run a lot of stuff through him and defensively he gives us a lot," senior Sasha Stefanovic said, "but we had contributions from a lot of different guys who brought the energy and the toughness."

It was Stefanovic who assumed more of the scoring load. He made six threes and scored a game-high 22 points, one of Purdue's priorities offensively being to get him more involved.

Meanwhile, the Boilermakers' post strength showed up, as both Zach Edey and Trevion Williams finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds.

"If one big guy played and got 24 and 20, people would be like, 'Man, that's an unbelievable game,'" Coach Matt Painter said, "and that's what our guys got tonight. You have to give them credit for what they do per 40 minutes."

Point guards Eric Hunter and Isaiah Thompson combined for 18 points, as Purdue found more than enough offensively without Ivey's dynamic athleticism and playmaking abilities. Those two veteran guards came up big in a second half where Purdue needed run-stoppers at times.

But the Boilermakers also played well defensively.

Northwestern was forced deep into shot clocks often in the first half, needing three really difficult three-pointers to get to 28 points at halftime, an 11-point deficit. In the second half, a Boo Buie blitz — three threes in the span of 1:11 — was a bit fluky while Northwestern played in come-from-behind mode.

Purdue joined forces with foul trouble to keep Northwestern leading scorer Pete Nance to just three field goal attempts. He made all of them, but didn't get enough opportunities to really affect the game. Chase Audige was shut down, finishing 1-of-8. He also encountered foul problems.

Big man Ryan Young, who Purdue was intent to not let work one-on-one on the interior, managed just six points, and Northwestern got just five offensive rebounds, as Purdue dominated the defensive glass.

"Coach Painter made a point that sometimes our best games, we have the least time to prepare, like the Maui Tournament or Battle 4 Atlantis, something like that," Stefanovic said. "We didn't really have a lot of time to prep. We've been playing a lot of games lately and it's hard for us to get a lot of reps because we're banged up, tired, whatever.

"I thought we just did a good job of mentally locking in and having that mindset on the defensive end. We did a good job taking away stuff they like to do. They run a lot of great stuff. We just tried to make things difficult on them and take them out of some things."

Purdue led start to finish and had more than a few opportunities to blow the game wide open, but did have to weather a couple of Northwestern runs, enough to make the sold-out Mackey Arena crowd squirm a bit.

First, Northwestern opened the second half 7-0, cutting a 12-point halftime lead by five.

Isaiah Thompson, though, tracked down a loose ball and drew a foul, made both, then hit timely threes the next two trips down the floor to stem that Wildcat burst. He missed his third shot at it, but Mason Gillis cleaned up the miss, before Eric Hunter pilfered Northwestern's next possession and dunked off the steal.

Purdue was fortunate, because just moments earlier, Northwestern badly botched a fast break that would have cut the Boilermaker lead to just four. It amounted to a four-point swing.

Later, Buie made those three straight threes. A 17-point Purdue lead was cut to eight.

But after a Zach Edey basket, Ethan Morton manipulated the defense with his dribble on the left side of the floor, then set up Stefanovic on the opposite side for what might have been the game's biggest shot, pushing the lead back to 13. The Wildcats never threatened again.

It means more than your typical Sunday afternoon win over Northwestern at home would, because Purdue did this without one of its biggest pieces.

Purdue just came off a taxing week on the road, a couple of exhausting games, and this was that proverbial sleepy trap game moment. The Boilermakers played well, though, a variety of players rose to occasions. This was a positive step, obviously.

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