Breakdown: Purdue's win at Indiana
BLOOMINGTON — This was the win Purdue's been waiting for.
The Boilermakers' relatively comfortable 74-62 win at Indiana Saturday not only continued their dominance of their chief rival — that's nine out of 10 now for Purdue — and scored them another coveted NCAA Tournament résumé boost, but may have been the win they needed to put their well-documented road struggles behind them.
Our breakdown.
WHAT HAPPENED
Purdue got the start it needed, atypical of its road results prior, then closed the first half with a 12-0 surge, answered every IU run, then closed the second half with another surge.
It was quite an awakening for the Boilermakers, who've now won their past two games on the road after dropping their first four in Big Ten play.
"We showed we're a tough team," center Matt Haarms said. "We fought them from beginning to end, and that's extremely important."
Despite a solid start for Purdue, the Hoosiers managed to claim a three-point lead in the final four minutes of the first half.
Then, this: Aaron Wheeler, mired in a season of profound struggle relative to expectations, took Purdue from three down to three up by connecting on consecutive threes, swinging the game's momentum and spitting in the eye of the 11 percent he was shooting from three-point range in Big Ten play prior.
"I was trying to contribute other things when my shot wasn't falling," Wheeler said, "but it was good to see a couple go down."
Indeed, for Purdue, it was.
Wheeler's threes spurred a 12-0 run that sent Indiana into its momentous halftime occasion — the return of Bob Knight — with the Hoosiers down 37-28.
In the second half, Purdue, again, answered every threat, quieted every alarm.
And a bunch of different players did it.
IU cuts Purdue's lead to six quickly. Sasha Stefanovic nails back-to-back jumpers for a personal 5-0 run.
When it was back to eight later, Isaiah Thompson drained a bold catch-and-shoot three off an aggressive pass ahead from Nojel Eastern. Then Wheeler scored around the basket through two Hoosiers, and Thompson hit another three. Suddenly, Purdue's lead peaked at 16.
The Hoosiers scored 12 of the next 14, to get within six, then Eric Hunter hit Matt Haarms slipping to the basket for an and-one, and IU never got with single-digits again.
Evan Boudreaux took it from there.
In the final seven minutes or so, he beat Indiana to two offensive rebounds to keep Purdue in clock-draining mode and choke off IU's long-shot comeback hopes. For good measure, he stripped the home team of a pair of possessions by drawing a pair of charges.
"He wanted to win more," Haarms said of Boudreaux. "Every time it came off the rim, it was his. He closed the game out single-handedly."
Purdue rode an offensive wave to its biggest road win, completely belying its past body of work away from Mackey Arena. The Boilermakers — last in the Big Ten in field goal percentage coming in — shot better than 48 percent, and a team that has struggled mightily to make threes away from home took 16 of them in Bloomington and made half of them.
WHY IT HAPPENED
Purdue was very good at both ends of the floor.
Offensively, it flowed unlike anything it's shown this season away from Mackey Arena.
With it being deep into Big Ten season now, understanding the quality of coaching and thoroughness of scouting, Matt Painter has made a bit of a tweak, moving to more of Purdue's standard motion offense as opposed to called plays from the sideline.
Painter downplayed the significance of the shift.
Eric Hunter didn't.
"We played free today, played with more motion offense," Hunter said, "and it's hard then to see what's going to happen and catch on to stuff."
At the same time, Purdue thrived off turnovers, its guards again attacking in the open floor in transition and secondary transition, an aggressiveness that has paid significant dividends lately.
The Boilermakers parlayed 14 IU turnovers into 17 points.
Only three Purdue players scored in double-figures as part of its finest offensive showing of the season away from home, but eight players scored a half dozen points or more.
WHO MADE IT HAPPEN
Painter sat down behind the mic at his post-game press conference and started talking about key players.
"I could mention everybody on our team," he said.
For certain.
Everyone who played impacted the game for the better for Purdue. Literally everyone.
(Trevion Williams was just 3-of-11 for six points, but those six points loomed large in the final 10 minutes of the first half.)
But rivalry wins often come with surprise heroes, and if these qualify as surprises, then Aaron Wheeler and Isaiah Thompson obviously jump out.
Wheeler may have changed the game with his back-to-back threes in the first half. IU had just crept ahead and a run to end the half might have altered everything from there on out. That was probably the biggest stretch of the game.
Thompson, in his very first Purdue-IU game, his first visit to Assembly Hall as the bad guy, gave Purdue eight points in 12 minutes and was to the second half what Wheeler was to the first. His back-to-back threes may have headed off an Indiana rally.
Can't say enough about not just both players' productivity but the effect of their productivity at the times it occurred.
Boudreaux, too. He was very good on defense, also, as reinforcements against Trayce Jackson-Davis, the game's most difficult matchup for Purdue. Jackson-Davis scored 16, but never wrought havoc on Purdue's front line as his athleticism and explosiveness suggested he might be able to.
Nojel Eastern: Eight points on two shots — IU pinned its last-ditch comeback hopes on fouling him, and he made 4-of-6 — five assists and one turnover, on top of his standard defensive presence, albeit without a marquee perimeter matchup to take on. That said, no Indiana guard really hurt Purdue, a credit to all the Boilermaker guards and wings.
WHAT IT MEANS
It means Purdue has found what it's been missing and whatever barriers that may have stood between the Boilermakers and winning road games of significance have either been torn down or are being effectively circumvented.
Indiana is a flawed team, for sure, but winning at IU is different. It requires a different kind of poise, a different kind of toughness, all the things that Purdue has so often lacked away from Mackey Arena.
If this is translatable, Purdue's in business.
Additionally, Purdue may be quickly finding itself offensively. Eric Hunter is giving Purdue a key presence with the ball in his hands, Purdue's seniors are playing outstanding basketball and the Boilermakers have made jumpers during their past 41 minutes of road basketball, and have two wins now to show for it.
This was an enormous win for Purdue in itself, but the signs of growth that came with it were an equally enormous development for a Boilermaker team for which this season has been no straight line.
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