For Purdue, regarded as one of the best teams in college basketball this season, a win Tuesday night at No. 10 Wisconsin is a must if the eighth-ranked Boilermakers are going to lay claim to at least a piece of the Big Ten championship.

That's no small ask, but the Boilermakers pretty much have to win this game in order to keep alive their goals of a regular season conference championship, shared or not.

But under a very different set of circumstances, Purdue might already have T-shirts printed.

"Take away the Michigan game," senior Sasha Stefanovic said, "and in all our other losses, it's been our mistakes that got us beat."

While most every team in college basketball can play the what-if game around its failures and ponder how different things might be if only this or that may have played out differently, the clarity of the common denominator to most of Purdue's losses is clear: Turnovers.

Specifically, runs of them and the damage inflicted at both ends of the floor.

Tuesday night's game in Madison represents both ends of a distinct spectrum.

Wisconsin's standing at the doorstep of a Big Ten title, because it does not beat itself, leading the country in fewest turnovers and riding a remarkable run of 14 straight wins in games decided by a half dozen points or fewer.

Purdue's still trying to kick down the door to a Big Ten title for the opposite reason, because it's too often beaten itself with turnovers, setting up three Big Ten losses by shots made in games' final seconds and another loss to this same Wisconsin team that didn't come down to the final seconds but did play out similarly.

Continue reading below

Purdue ranks 88th nationally in turnover percentage, but 10th in the Big Ten, where possessions matter so much more, this issue being amplified by the Boilermakers forcing so few turnovers.

But 88th nationally, that number could be worse.

Broad numbers, though, don't tell the full story, as they reflect more Purdue's inconsistency in this area as opposed to spotlighting a glaring problem, on paper.

It's not necessarily the raw turnover totals. The 17 Purdue committed at Michigan State on Saturday, yes, that's a big number, but something of an outlier. Prior to the loss in East Lansing, Purdue averaged 11.5 turnovers overall this season and 11.4 in Big Ten play. Those are not atrocious numbers.

It's the impact, never felt more than at Michigan State, as the Spartans scored 16 points off Purdue turnovers and 19 fast-break points, with there obviously being overlap between those two numbers.

Purdue came out strong defensively to open the second half, but committed four turnovers in the span of six possessions, squandering a distinct window of opportunity.

Such stretches weren't foreign for Purdue.

At Indiana, Purdue led 16-8 in the first half. It then committed eight turnovers in the span of about nine minutes and wound up trailing by nine at the half before losing in the final seconds.

It should be noted that the first of those turnovers resulted in the first three-pointer of the game for Rob Phinisee, who wound up sucker-punching the Boilermakers with 20 points and eventually the game-winner. Another Phinisee run-out off a turnover later did nothing to cool him off.

Prior, in the first meeting with Wisconsin, a similar story: Purdue started off well enough, then back-to-back turnovers wound up becoming back-to-back transition baskets for Johnny Davis, on his way to the 37-percent eruption that sunk the Boilermakers in their only home loss of the season to this point. Wisconsin ended the first half with another pick-six for Johnny Davis off an Isaiah Thompson turnover — that should have been ruled a kicked ball — and went on to win, as the Badgers so often win.

Then, the bottoming out at Michigan State, where Purdue's window of opportunity closed on its fingers in those first few minutes of the second half.

"It's just us being sloppy with the ball," said leading scorer Jaden Ivey, who committed five of Purdue's turnovers at Michigan State. "It's about being sharp and when we have the ball in our hands, being strong with it."

Ivey said it'll be a priority for him to be "stronger with the ball" as many of his turnovers have come from defenders swiping at the ball or during contact with defenders, interactions where he says he doesn't expect to get foul calls, but will need to do secure the ball better.

"We just have to approach it that way," Ivey said, "and just keep going."

There are some root causes for Purdue's turnover issues that either Matt Painter has theorized about or are plainly apparent.

For one thing, any time a team plays through the post heavily or has a really aggressive scoring guard, turnovers are going to be the cost of doing business at times.

This Purdue team has both.

A few years back when Purdue built a Big Ten championship team around its high-scoring backcourt of Carsen Edwards and Ryan Cline, it surrounded those players with extreme efficiency, essentially allowing Edwards to do his thing knowing the possessions game would be balanced out by everyone else on the court. With Purdue now essentially having dual centerpieces with Ivey and the combination of Zach Edey and Trevion Williams, things aren't nearly as centralized and the Boilermakers have two turnover-vulnerable avenues for scoring running simultaneously.

Beyond that, Matt Painter has had a couple of theories about some causes of additional turnovers.

"I just think that in the game of basketball, good things are contagious," Painter said, "and bad things are contagious."

There's way more to it, though.

For one thing, he's often suggested that when his team has built leads, its judgment has sometimes gone sideways. That didn't apply at Michigan State, but may have at Indiana and even Rutgers and the first Wisconsin game, as well as some games the Boilermakers went on to win.

Also, offensive discipline, an issue so often masked by Purdue's glowing overlying numbers.

"We're not a very good team when we break what we're doing," Painter said. "When you coach good players or good teams, they'll normally break a play when they see something advantageous to attack. We break a play for the sake of breaking a play, like it's an experiment, and that's gotten us in trouble this whole year."

Finally, there's the issue that seems to come up so often, but is relevant to so much: Zach Edey's complicated relationship with whistles.

Two of Edey's three turnovers at Michigan State were offensive fouls. In the final minute of the game, a bizarre life-on-the-road foul on Edey on a rebound of a missed free throw gave the Spartans two enormous free throws, instead of putting Edey himself at the line for what could have been go-ahead points.

"They were offensive fouls," Painter said of those first two calls on Edey. "Now, what happens before that? We were getting fouled, whether it's a hook-and-hold, grabbing jerseys, face box-outs, whatever. And they called fouls in that game. They just didn't call all of them, and that's what we'd talked about, being on the road against physical teams. Those things are going to happen. You have to be able to play through it and be better because of it.

"The reason you foul can't be because you're getting fouled, and that happens with us sometimes, especially with Zach. Zach's the only guy who unfairly gets a poor whistle. They've not done a good job officiating him, they've been very inconsistent. When Jaden gets out in space and they're checking him, they're calling those fouls, because it's out in the open and the world sees it.

"Inside it's a little bit harder, but it can't make you go and foul them. You can't use that seventh-grade logic that since they fouled you, you're allowed to foul them. We've really tried to get them to be able to play through things and understand things, but it's your 10th road game in the conference and it's been a consistent theme. This is the way it is, the way it's been for a hundred years."

Whatever the root cause of Purdue's most prevalent fatal flaw, it all comes to the forefront tonight in Madison in the biggest game of the season.

"We have to have quality possessions at the offensive end," Painter said. "When I got back and watch that (first Wisconsin) game, we didn't have enough quality possessions."

Membership Info: Sign up for GoldandBlack.com now | Why join? | Questions?

Follow GoldandBlack.com: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

More: Gold and Black Illustrated/Gold and Black Express | Subscribe to our podcast

Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2022. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited.