Breakdown: Purdue's loss at Ohio State
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Matt Painter pointed out Saturday afternoon, following his Purdue team's 68-52 loss at Ohio State, that a team's "shortcomings never go away," that they can be overcome, sometimes over a sustained period, but they're never really done away with.
That point was especially apparent in Columbus, as many of Purdue's road demons from prior to its wins at Northwestern and Indiana persisted.
Our breakdown
WHAT HAPPENED
More of the same that's plagued Purdue away from Mackey Arena this season, starting with a lackluster start.
Before six minutes had passed, the Boilermakers were down nine — an 8-0 Ohio State run would later push it to a dozen in the first half — as Purdue struggled to score, the Buckeyes (the No. 1 three-point shooting team in the Big Ten) made five of their first seven triples and both teams turned the ball over too much.
This has been Purdue's dubious M.O. on the road, early deficits, and this Saturday, the Boilermakers' win last Saturday at IU was made to look more like the exception than the rule.
"We talk about it all the time, that we can't come out and be flat for the first five to 10 minutes," senior Evan Boudreaux said. "We have to play those first few minutes like it's a 60-60 game with 30 seconds left, because if we set the tone, we execute, we set screens and we play the way we know we're capable of playing the first couple minutes, it's really tough on teams. That's what we have to be consistent with.
"It's got to be everybody. We can't worry about missing shots. Everybody's going to make mistakes. It's just being able to brush stuff off and do little things like setting good screens, getting your teammates open, being aggressive and taking shots when they come to you. We don't have anybody in our locker room who's selfish or isn't thinking about winning. We just have to be able to overcome adversity early. ... We have to be able to pick our heads up and grind out wins."
Consistent with that road M.O., however, Purdue did give itself opportunities.
Inside 10-and-a-half minutes, Ohio State bobbled the ball, Eric Hunter stole it and went the other way for a transition score that cut a 16-point Buckeye lead down to nine.
On Purdue's next four possessions, Nojel Eastern accounted for two of Purdue's three turnovers in that span and missed a jump shot.
"That's the one thing when you're down: You're fighting to get close," Painter said. "You want to fight to win the game, but if you're not close, you're not going to put yourself in that position. You're still not even in that mode. You're in a long-three-possession game, at nine points.
"There, you have to give yourself a chance, and we just don't give ourselves a chance. You just can't have those empty possessions."
Such things were Purdue's undoing.
The Boilermakers shot only 35 percent, turned the ball over 16 times and missed with maddening frequency again at the rim, in the paint or off open threes generated from getting the ball into the paint. Big men Trevion Williams and Matt Haarms were a combined 3-of-10 for 10 points and Purdue collectively was 4-of-20 from three-point range.
Painter often cites his team's difficulty playing through such offensive shortcomings.
That shortcoming, though, was only part of the problem offensively on this day.
"Early on, I thought the execution was good," guard Eric Hunter said, "but myself and some other people had too many turnovers, so there was no way we could execute. We kept giving them the ball."
WHY IT HAPPENED
As has been Purdue's reality outside West Lafayette, the first half or so of the first half — those first 10 minutes — told the tale again, same as they did at Nebraska, Maryland and Rutgers and to lesser extents Michigan and Illinois.
"We have to come out focused and ready to go," senior Jahaad Proctor said. "I think they scored eight straight and that kind of set the tone for the entire game.
"We just dig holes for ourselves and make it tough to get out."
This time it was Ohio State generating threes — the sort of threes the percentages suggest the Buckeyes will make as often than not — and pushing the ball in the open floor. Ohio State guard C.J. Walker finished with a modest nine points, but seven of them came in the game's first six minutes, two of those buckets coming either off him simply pushing the ball past Purdue's transition defense or running off a turnover.
The start was only part of it, however. Purdue gave itself chances at times, then undid those chances with poor decisions.
The root cause of this outcome, really, was that Purdue wasn't necessarily good enough in any area against a quality team on that quality team's home floor.
Seniors Evan Boudreaux and Jahaad Proctor scored 17 and 15 points, respectively, and that's a credit to the two final-year players, but that they combined for 62 percent of their team's scoring and 12 of its 19 field goals on a day in which Purdue couldn't even threaten the 60-point mark, that also reflects the fact that Purdue didn't get anyone else's best beyond those two players.
That said, Proctor and Boudreaux were both very good.
Proctor was asked what kind of example the two seniors can set from here on out.
"Just coming in ready to play and playing aggressive from the jump," Proctor said.
WHO MADE IT HAPPEN
Ohio State's Kyle Young isn't a scorer, per se, but rather one of the Big Ten's best grinder types.
On this day, though, his 16 points of miscellaneous variety drove Ohio State's comfortable win.
Beyond that, Luther Muhammad got loose on Purdue for three threes, including one off one of the game's toughest swings for the Boilermakers. Early in the second half, after Young scored to push a nine-point halftime lead to 11, Walker missed a jumper, but the rebound snuck between a couple Purdue players back to Walker. The ball found Muhammad in the corner and suddenly the Buckeyes were back up 16.
Ohio State was 9-of-20 from three, and the 5-of-7 start obviously obviously contributed to the hole Purdue could never pull itself out of.
WHAT IT MEANS
This outcome suggests that Purdue's apparent higher level of focus and cohesion at Indiana may have been a product of that very particular environment as opposed to an awakening of sorts.
To win on the road in the Big Ten, this season more than ever, and especially at this time of years, teams must be something close to their best, and Purdue simply hasn't been enough this season, and Saturday at Ohio State was one of the best examples. The Buckeyes obviously are no pushover and they needed this game, too, but the Boilermakers didn't match their level.
Now, Wisconsin.
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