Breakdown: Purdue's loss at Illinois
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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — It's been a season of turbulence for Purdue offensively, to put it mildly.
Sunday night came a new low, not just for this season, but for any season.
In the Boilermakers' 63-37 loss at Illinois, some most unwelcome history was made.
The last time Purdue scored so little: Jan. 3, 1949, in a 42-33 loss to Loyola.
The last time Purdue shot worse than Sunday night's 25-percent: Never.
According to the program's media guide, the existing low was 26 percent vs. Michigan State in 2003.
Breaking down Purdue's loss ...
WHAT HAPPENED
Purdue didn't score until Matt Haarms split a pair of foul shots six minutes and 50 seconds after the game tipped off.
By then, Illini led 11-0 on their way to being up as many as 15 before halftime.
Eleven of Illinois' first 21 points came off second chances. The Boilermakers arrived at the State Farm Center hyper-aware of big man Kofi Cockburn's potential on the offensive glass, but he had nothing to do with it, at least not directly.
It boiled down to a word that came up often around Purdue afterward, both publicly and privately: Fight.
"Coach said he wouldn't change anything about this game," Nojel Eastern said. "It was on us to have a fight."
After exiting the locker room, Eastern's fellow captain, Matt Haarms, pointed a finger squarely at himself.
Coming off a 26-point game in the double-overtime win over Minnesota, Haarms was 2-of-8 for five points vs. Illinois. After totaling 40 points between them in the 50-minute game vs. Minnesota, he and fellow big man Trevion Williams combined for 11 points on 5-of-13 shooting, and 10 rebounds, in Champaign
"I played such a good game last time (vs. Minnesota) and to follow it up with a performance like today, I'm just really disappointed in myself," Haarms said. "I take full accountability for it, and I'll get back in the gym, watch film, and see what I need to improve, but starting out today, I was not good."
No one was.
That was Matt Painter's assessment, at least, following a game in which Purdue trailed by nine inside the 13-minute mark of the second half, then found themselves on the wrong end of a 16-2 run, not all that dissimilar to what happened at Nebraska in the Boilermakers' first road game, another game in which the Boilermakers trailed start to finish, basically.
"It's something that's plagued us as a team, that we're not ready to play," Haarms said, "and I really felt it today.
"(Illinois was) playing harder than we were and to me, that's unacceptable."
WHY IT HAPPENED
Purdue has limitations offensively. That much has been apparent all season.
The Boilermakers, though, have really struggled to make jump shots on the road.
They'd been trending upward from three-point range the past four games, no matter the venue. Sunday night, that trend broke hard.
Purdue was 3-of-17 from three-point range.
Forget three-point range, though.
Another season-long scourge struck again, and struck hard: The Boilermakers' inexplicable problems finishing high-percentage opportunities at the basket.
It's been virtually a team-wide problem all season.
"We had the ball at the rim a lot," Coach Matt Painter said. "... You've got to be able to make a layup."
At Illinois, Nojel Eastern was 2-of-10 from the floor. He saw several golden opportunities come after Purdue got within single digits in the second half. Illinois ran away and hid as the Boilermakers' shots bounced off the rim.
"The basketball gods weren't with me today," Eastern said, clearly frustrated. "... One day, the basketball gods will be with me and I'm not going to miss a single one. That's just basketball. Obviously I'm going to get back in the gym and continue to be aggressive."
In light of all that went wrong offensively, Purdue's 4-of-10 foul shooting seems redundant.
"The morale of our team just drops when you're missing point-blank layups and missing free throws," Painter said.
So much more went into this outcome, though, and the common denominator among all the post-game explanations boiled down to one thing: Fight. The very intangible Painter lamented his team lacking, in his view, following the loss at Marquette. In Game 3.
"That's on us, what we have to do as a team, which is fight," Eastern said. "Coming into practice, I'm going to bring that energy, that fighting mentality, battle every single person I'm in front of, because that's what it's going to take to win."
WHO MADE IT HAPPEN
Illinois' Allen Griffin came off the bench for 16 points and 12 rebounds, six of them off the offensive glass. His effort in particular was a difference-maker for the Illini.
That effort wasn't matched.
"We just got outplayed," guard Eric Hunter said. "We had a couple of dudes who were playing hard for us, but we need the whole team, like (Illinois') whole team was playing hard."
Illinois overall hammered Purdue on the glass, even though Cockburn — the Big Ten's most physically dominant big man and the reason the Illini have been the conference's best rebounding team by every measure — wound up with only four boards while Purdue shot historically poorly.
Twelve offensive rebounds turned Into 17 Illinois points, a credit to Griffin more than any other individual.
WHAT IT MEANS
Purdue turned last season around this time a year ago by winning close games at Wisconsin and Ohio State.
This game afforded the Boilermakers an opportunity to cast aside their sketchy road results thus far this season and show they're growing toward being able to win such games.
The result was the worst yet.
The Boilermakers were solid on defense, and the numbers would have reflected it even more had the second chances not been what they were. But if their ability to score away from Mackey Arena doesn't take a turn for the better in a hurry, and they don't compete as they promised to after this ugly setback, then they may be hard pressed to beat anyone away from Mackey Arena this season.
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