Breakdown: Purdue's win over Central Michigan

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Closing its non-conference season Saturday afternoon in Mackey Arena, Purdue rolled, routing Central Michigan 97-62 in its final game before the resumption of Big Ten play Jan. 2.

Sasha Stefanovic enjoyed another of those shooting outbursts, like the ones from the Texas and Virginia games, en route to a career-high 23 points, two of his seven triples coming in the game's opening two-and-a-half minutes.

He never let up.

"Kind of like the other times I've shot it well, I just tried to come out aggressive and be really confident in my shot," Stefanovic said. "Trevion (Williams) made a lot of good passes. He draws a lot of attention inside and made it a lot easier."

Stefanovic got Purdue off to a solid start, then triggered the avalanche later in the first half, making three more triples In the final four minutes of the first half, which ended with Purdue ahead by 30, 51-21.

"It's a game-changer," Coach Matt Painter said of Stefanovic's penchant this season for such runs of shot-making in Mackey Arena.

The sophomore's jump-shooting headlined the outing for Purdue, but the outcome wasn't solely a product of the Boilermakers' offensive showing.

Central Michigan visited West Lafayette ranking third nationally in scoring. Level of-competition skewed those numbers considerably, but nevertheless, the Chippewas averaged about 89 points per game prior to Saturday.

Thanks to some garbage-time informality — Purdue led by as many as 40 — Central Michigan got to 62, only 12 of which came in the game's decisive first 13 minutes or so.

And the Chippewas' points came at the price of gross inefficiency: 22 turnovers and 29-percent first-half shooting, 38 percent for the game.

That was a credit to Purdue's defense, which welcomed back centerpiece Matt Haarms, albeit in limited minutes, and attributable in part to the Boilermakers' ability to disrupt a fast-paced team, very similar to the opener vs. Green Bay.

Meanwhile, the Boilermakers shot nearly 55 percent, a welcomed sight for a team that's struggled with "easy" offense this season.

Eric Hunter scored 16 and Williams and Haarms combined for 23 on 10-of-15 shooting. Williams also grabbed a dozen rebounds.

Purdue was opportunistic in every sense offensively.

It turned 22 turnovers into 21 points and parlayed 14 offensive rebounds into 19 second-chance points, again welcomed developments for a team that's been inordinately inconsistent finishing high-percentage opportunities at the basket.

This was the second game out of three — the other being the win at Ohio — in which Purdue thrived on turning sound defense into easy offense.

"We haven't been finishing plays off the best lately, especially at the rim," Stefanovic said, "but our success with points off turnovers, it's been a good sign."

Beyond that, Purdue exploited Central Michigan's defensive M.O., its a-little-of-everything style.

Keno Davis' team hasn't been great defensively this season, but it has been diverse. It goes man, it zones, it presses, and most everything in between.

In that sense, Purdue associate head coach Micah Shrewsberry joked of this being Purdue's "final exam" offensively, a clearinghouse of all the defenses the Boilermakers saw in Games 1 through 12.

Faced with that exam, though, Purdue's approach wasn't solely to have all the answers, but to attack, to hit Central Michigan before it had even presented the question.

"We knew they do that and of course we had to be ready for all those things, but for us, it was about taking advantage of the fact that when you switch defenses, there's probably at least one guy who doesn't know what he's doing," Haarms said. "It's really tough to switch defenses. There's a reason we only play one defense (at Purdue). It's hard enough.

"We knew there'd be some guys when they were switching from a zone to man to man who wouldn't know what was going on and I think we exploited that really well. That's part of the reason Sash got such great open shots, because every time they were switching defenses we were pushing it at them in transition, and if there's that one guy who doesn't know what he's doing and he happens to be guarding Sasha, we're getting wide-open shots for Sasha."

Obviously, Stefanovic's shooting jumps off the page, as he's given Purdue that offensive weapon, that player capable of making three in a row, or four out of five, or in this case seven out of 10, whatever it may be, to turn a game upside down.

That he finished with just one turnover and four assists, too, bears mentioning. This wasn't haphazard chucking on his part.

The reality, though, is that this was a game where one team was so much better than the other that no one player was the difference between winning and losing, but Stefanovic was the player who made certain this was never a game in the first place.

Very little.

Purdue was the far superior team playing on its home floor, and this was an outcome altogether unsurprising.

While it was a positive development that the Boilermakers ran away and hid relatively quickly, closing the first half strong, this game doesn't really suggest any of the issues that have held Purdue back during pre-Big Ten play have been solved.

And Purdue shot better than its prior of body of work this season, which always brings with it a certain fools-gold sort of question.

"I want to see them play well when the ball doesn't go in," Painter said.

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