GoldandBlack.com Analysis and Wrap Video: Purdue's loss to Saint Peter's

PHILADELPHIA — Purdue's season's over, following a 67-64 loss Friday night to Saint Peter's.

Our post-game analysis and Wrap Video.

No one could have foreseen the end of the Purdue's coming to a No. 15 seed — however good Saint Peter's may be for a 15 seed — but the outcome the Boilermakers endured on Friday night was always a possibility.

As good as Purdue's been all season — 29 wins, top-10 virtually start to finish and all — it did so in the face of flaws that were far from insignificant.

You've read here a thousand times that when Purdue takes care of the ball, It can beat anyone, and when Purdue doesn't, It can lose to anyone. That's been true all season, and it never got fixed In any meaningful way. In the final weeks of the season, The Fatal Flaw bit Purdue in the title game of the Big Ten Tournament, then knocked it from the NCAA Tournament.

Friday's result was disappointing, but can't possibly have surprised anyone who's been paying attention, unless your stance on the matter was something along the lines, 'This can't possibly keep happening.'

Turnovers ended Purdue's season. More went into it, obviously, but turnovers ended Purdue's season, and while Saint Peter's certainly deserves credit for making an excellent offensive basketball team look very ordinary, but Purdue deserves a proportionate amount of responsibility.

Here's what essentially happened: The Peacocks lured the Boilermakers into a Big Ten game, a game where points would be hard to come by, possessions would matter even more and it would be conceivable someone would win by 39 percent, Wisconsin style. In effect, Saint Peter's guarded the hell out of Purdue, but also just kind of got out of the way and let the Boilermakers beat themselves by turning the ball over and fouling on defense.

That's been the blueprint against Purdue all season long. Rutgers, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Iowa, now Saint Peter's. There's a clear common denominator to those guys.

Even when Purdue looked like the best team in college basketball back In November, there were warning signs of trouble ahead. What would happen when the Boilermakers couldn't score 80 or make a dozen threes per game?

You got your answer. Purdue never rounded into a more complete team, or at least never fully. It was better the past six weeks on defense, but making that step a month earlier would have changed the complexion of the season.

Purdue never valued possessions the way it needed to to be as good as it could be.

You know what, though, back in November, Purdue didn't have to, and maybe in retrospect that was the beginning of a 29-8 season ending with such disappointment.

It's really hard to call 29-8 disappointing under most circumstances. But when you look at what this team did vs. what this team was capable of, and how relatively small that gap was, that's really disappointing.

This was a very different Purdue team, one that never should have been viewed as anything like the typical Purdue model. This group had way more skill and athletic upside, but not nearly the defensive mentality, the knack for loose balls and the instinct to take care of the basketball the way Purdue teams generally have over time.

With one of the most gifted rosters the program has ever seen, what Purdue needed most was to simply be more Purdue-like.