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EVANSTON, Ill. — Purdue's locker room must have been overcome by not just elation following the Boilermakers' 61-58 win at Northwestern Saturday night, but relief.

The Boilermakers had to have this one, and got it courtesy of Sasha Stefanovic's three-pointer with 3.1 seconds remaining, capping Purdue's 11-0 run to close a game it trailed by as many as 10 in the second half.

Our breakdown.

For the bulk of Saturday night's 40 minutes, Purdue was no better than Northwestern, the Boilermakers' road woes persisting, to the point the Wildcats led by as many as 10 with 13-plus minutes left.

Purdue, though, was better when it mattered the most — the game's final three minutes, notably the final minute, when Jahaad Proctor tied the game with 53.9 seconds remaining, then Stefanovic won it.

After Proctor's three from the left corner, off a shot fake, tied it, a possession call went to review and was overturned from Northwestern ball to Purdue's.

The Boilermakers had their chance.

"We're like 0-for-20 in monitor calls," Coach Matt Painter joked. "I hate that damn monitor.

"We got lucky."

The Boilermakers took the break and ran with it, putting the ball in freshman Isaiah Thompson's hands to initiate offense, with Trevion Williams out front to set a high ball screen, and flanked by Eric Hunter, Stefanovic and Proctor.

"We drew it up just for the decision," Painter said.

The decision was made by Hunter, who took Stefanovic's handoff and dribbled left to right while Williams rolled into a post-up and Stefanovic crept out to the three-point arc.

When Northwestern converged on Hunter, he passed back to Stefanovic. He was wide open, several feet behind the line, and from right in front of Purdue's bench — the very bench where it celebrated a Big Ten title around 11 months ago — Stefanovic shed his well-documented road shooting struggles and canned the jumper.

Hunter said he knew as soon as he made the pass "it was going down."

Once he caught it, Stefanovic may have felt the same.

"It felt good coming out of my hand," Stefanovic said. "Once he passed it out to me, I knew I had to get it up quick, and it felt good out of my hand."

On the same play a few possessions earlier, Hunter had turned the corner and stuck an elbow jumper.

This time, Northwestern focused on stopping that.

With the game on the line, Hunter made the decision his coaches hoped for. Simply, the right one.

"They paid more attention to me on that one and it ended up with Sasha being wide open," Hunter said. "We like our chances with him wide open."

It happened simply because, with its season on the line, Purdue delivered its best when it needed it most.

Those final three minutes mirrored situations Purdue's been in before this season, but faltered.

This time ...

"I don't want to sound corny, but just determination," Hunter said. "We really didn't want to lose. We knew that was a big game for us."

Purdue's offensive execution on the final play capped an evening where such results were hard to come by. Purdue shot only 38 percent in the first half and was shooting that same percentage before it made its last four shots to steal the game at the end.

Truth be told, Purdue won this game solely because it was better during the minutes in which the outcome was decided.

Lastly, this: While it was far from ideal that Purdue only scored six points through the first eight minutes of the game, it also didn't fall behind by a considerable margin early either. That's been Purdue's fatal flaw on the road, one that Painter says has perhaps worn his team down, the energy that must be expended to make comebacks.

For the first time this season, Hunter came off the bench, as Purdue went with its sixth different starting five of the season.

It might have brought something extra out of him.

"Yeah, probably," Hunter said, smiling. "That's probably every player that started every game, then came off the bench. I knew they wanted me to be aggressive, running ball screens, getting in transition and stealing some points."

The reward: Hunter was 5-of-10 and tied Williams with a team-leading 13 points.

It was his second of two assists, though, that mattered most.

So, too, did Hunter being part of an offense that often pushed the ball quickly up the floor. The best thing Purdue did offensively prior to the game's final minutes was push the ball up the floor to "steal points," as Painter says. It allowed Purdue to generate easy offense on a night when offense wasn't easy otherwise.

This is complicated because this game's meaning probably lies in what comes next. Purdue is a better team than Northwestern, but wasn't for the first 37 minutes or so on Saturday. The outcome doesn't erase the reality that Purdue again struggled on the road, this time against a team that has won six games of any kind to this point in the season.

What it does mean, though, is that the Boilermakers live to fight another day in terms of the NCAA Tournament. This might have been an elimination game of sorts, and players even hinted at that reality after the game.

This one victory, one that came far from easily, doesn't automatically transform Purdue, most likely, but it did show something.

"This is a huge win," Thompson said. "We knew what was on the line. Obviously we want to make the NCAA Tournament and we knew we couldn't really afford to lose this game."

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