GoldandBlack.com Analysis: Purdue's loss at Nebraska
LINCOLN, Neb. — Purdue's trip to Nebraska, well, went badly, as the Boilermakers lost 70-56 to the Cornhuskers and boarded their flight to Ohio potentially facing a stint without the concussed Matt Haarms.
Here's our analysis from the disappointing Boilermaker loss.
WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS
The term "crisis" might be a bit too sharp, but Purdue seems to leave Lincoln with some existential questions, shall we say.
The Boilermakers had been trending upward since moving to bigger lineups with Haarms and Trevion Williams playing side by side to start games, and through much of those games. But this was the first matchup that wasn't ideally suited, almost tailor-made, for it.
It didn't go well. Nebraska controlled the pace of the game, by and large, and Purdue never "flipped" the matchup tradeoff, because it struggled to finish around the basket and it couldn't cash in putbacks.
Had it just made half its high-percentage shots on the interior, this might have been a different game. Fluke? Don't know, but defensively, Matt Painter felt the need to go small to start the second half, subbing in Nojel Eastern for Williams.
Purdue could not dictate the terms of play as well as it would have liked and with the massive front line, that's the hope. It wasn't solely a size issue Sunday. Purdue had to avoid run-outs off turnovers and long rebounds and couldn't to start the game, and had this game started different, it might have ended different.
What's this mean moving forward?
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