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Purdue opened Big Ten play Sunday evening in Mackey Arena with a 58-44 win over Northwestern, another low-scoring affair for a Boilermaker team prone to playing in them.

A breakdown:

Asked after Purdue's trip to Florida about the Boilermakers' potential need this season to "win ugly," center Matt Haarms said that if the Boilermakers' defense was good enough to do that, "Let's be positive about that."

That in mind, Haarms and Co. had much to celebrate Sunday night, because this was not particularly aesthetically pleasing basketball.

"I feel great about this," Haarms said. "It's a night our shot really didn't go in, at all. Basically throughout the whole game. We had stretches where it was better. But the ball doesn't go in sometimes, and I thought we responded to it really well.

"Outside of that initial shock of, 'Oh no, none of our shots are going in,' we responded really well and realized we had to grind one out."

Coming off a surreal shooting night vs. No. 5 Virginia, all things considered, the Boilermakers' results Sunday night reverted beyond their prior mean.

Running offense through big man Trevion Williams to open the game, Purdue found open looks from long distance and missed just about all of them, missing 14 of its 15 tries in the first half.

Purdue shot 31 percent overall in the first half, 39 percent for the game. At the end of the night, it was 5-of-22 from long range.

It mattered little, because Purdue dominated at the defensive end, holding the Wildcats to 34-percent shooting for the game.

After Northwestern answered an 11-1 Purdue run with a 7-0 run of its own to claim a short-lived lead, the Boilermakers led by six at halftime.

With Williams and Haarms free of their modest first-half foul trouble — they both started together again, then sat together for an extended stretch in the first half with two fouls each — Purdue opened the second half well, pushing its lead into double figures, thanks to a pair of Williams buckets bracketing a Sasha Stefanovic three.

Purdue's lead peaked at 16 in the final minute, even though this was only a six-point game with just under 13 minutes to play.

"This was something we needed to be able to grow towards," Haarms said of the "ugly" nature of the game.

"To be able to grind a Big Ten (win) out, it feels pretty good."

Defensively, Purdue has been downright dominant lately, and that hasn't changed the past two games as it's opened with a lineup that does make some concessions at that end of the floor.

Whether Purdue has been truly tested yet by a great offensive team is debatable, but the results, regardless, have been outstanding, and they were especially so vs. Northwestern.

The Wildcats, again, made 34 percent of their shots, and once forward Pete Nance (14 points) went cold after making a pair of early threes, Northwestern had no answers offensively.

And when Nojel Eastern came off the bench — for the second game in a row — Northwestern's halfcourt offense looked especially broken, as Purdue's ball pressure picked up and threw an already rhythmless offense even further out of whack.

Northwestern managed just 16 points in the first half. Had Purdue shot the ball better, it would have pulled away quickly.

"If we just could have made some shots and put them on their heels a little bit," Coach Matt Painter said, "I think things could have opened up for us."

This has been a positive trend for Purdue, which has allowed 70 points only once in nine games this season, and just held its fourth opponent under 50.

And when it mattered most, Purdue defended its best.

Northwestern essentially didn't score in the game's final four minutes, before Miller Kopp's meaningless bucket at the buzzer, the game already decided.

Lastly, coming off a seven-turnover game vs. Virginia, Purdue turned it over only six times vs. Northwestern. Free from VCU's and Florida State's pressure from the Emerald Coast Classic, the Boilermakers' turnover problems have subsided.

Defending, rebounding — a 38-31-margin win — and taking care of the basketball sounds like a recipe Purdue is well familiar with.

Sasha Stefanovic backed up his breakout game vs. Virginia with 14 points against Northwestern, Haarms finished with 12 and Jahaad Proctor again cracked double-figures — 25 straight games for him in his career now — with 10.

But Eric Hunter and Trevion Williams — each of them finished with eight — really mattered in this game.

Williams could have finished this game with 8-10 assists had teammates finished off the opportunities he helped create for them with his passing from the post. He settled for three. But he got Purdue off to a strong start in the second half, which was probably the key to the game.

But, again, this was a six-point game with 12:41 left to play.

At that moment, Eric Hunter made another shot-clock-beating three off the dribble. Then, he scored on a cut to the rim off Williams passing from the wing, facing the basket.

Hunter's 5-0 run pushed Purdue's lead back to 11, and soon after it became 13 — a big number in a game like this one.

Purdue won this game because of defense more than anything, though, and a lot of hands went into that, including Evan Boudreaux and Nojel Eastern coming off the bench. Both really affected this game.

Well, that depends on your perspective, but this game gave no reason to believe that Purdue's offensive eruption — relative to the opponent — vs. Virginia was much more than a magical night on Keady Court.

This is still a group that is going to have to cobble together enough offense to complement its potent defense.

The turnover trending is very positive for a team that has struggled to pass and catch at times — often critical ones — this season, but the shooting struggles returned for the start of Big Ten play.

Purdue is playing differently now than it was to start the season, with Williams and Haarms playing side by side more, and with that comes some wrinkles to iron out this week in practice. It's finals week.

Painter won't be canceling any of those practices.

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