MADISON, Wis. — In the biggest, highest-stakes game of the season, No. 8 Purdue lost on a pair of banked-in jumpers at No. 10 Wisconsin Tuesday night, falling 70-67 and seeing its Big Ten regular season title hopes extinguished.
Our post-game analysis and Wrap Video.
ON PAIN
Purdue's absorbed some really difficult losses this season, but this one had to be the worst.
At least at Rutgers Purdue could really point a finger at itself for that outcome. Same as the first Wisconsin game and the losses at Indiana and Michigan State.
This one, though, the Boilermakers took care of the ball and they played well on defense, and Jaden Ivey and Zach Edey made a run worthy of a champion after being down 11 with less than 13 minutes to play.
For all of that to be lost to a pair of fluke shots, that's what makes this one different.
Yes, Purdue missed free throws. Wisconsin missed the biggest free throw of the game.
But what transpired to actually decide this game was just luck, plain and simple. Wisconsin got the right end of that stick, as it so often does. Purdue, as has been a story of its season, did not.
Ron Harper's shot was luck. Various misfortunes — there's no sense in rehashing — befell Purdue in those three other losses as well. That's basketball, but when there are championships on the line, luck is generally part of the equation.
Purdue has won close games this season — at Illinois and at home vs. Ohio State and Maryland — but the maddening nature of most of the Boilermakers' Big Ten losses defines this season now as much as anything and leaves a certain unfulfilling element to what has been one of the most memorable years the program has seen.
(Fun fact: Matt Painter's now almost certainly lost out on three Big Ten championships — or at least one likely Big Ten championship this season — due to banked-in threes.)
Too often, Purdue's been so close to so much, and this stranger-than-fiction outcome adds another painful entry to the list, on a night when the Boilermakers were good enough to win, and good enough to win a championship, but got done in by simply dreadful luck.
Dissect the game however you'd like, but Johnny Davis put It best when he said of Chucky Hepburn's game-winner, "I'm not going to lie. That was some bullsh–t."
