This time, Purdue couldn't overcome its failings on the road
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MINNEAPOLIS — This wasn't the first time Purdue faced the headwinds of significant obstacles — offensive inefficiency central among them — on the road.
The difference this time? Purdue didn't win anyway.
Following Tuesday night's 73-69 loss at Minnesota, the No. 11 Boilermakers' championship celebration — if there's to be one — will have to wait.
Purdue shot only 35 percent for the game — 7-of-31 from Big Ten leading scorer Carsen Edwards and just 1-of-8 from recent standout Matt Haarms — and missed half its 18 free throws. The Boilermakers couldn't pull off their defensive priority to keep Minnesota out of transition, part of the reason Amir Coffey lit it up for 32 points. The bench, for the second time in three games, was a liability, or as Matt Painter put it, "We couldn't play them."
Yet, once again, despite such things, here was Purdue again with a chance to win ugly on the road, like it did at Indiana and Nebraska, the very reason it's even in this position to win the Big Ten.
This time, though, it failed where it had before thrived.
"We didn't make the plays down the stretch that we'd been making," senior Grady Eifert said. "I had a couple bone-headed throwaways at the end and there were just silly mistakes down the end of the game that we normally don't make. On the road it's always tough to close out games and we just weren't able to do it tonight."
It had its chances.
After the Boilermakers trailed by 12 with 14 minutes to go — almost exactly the same position Purdue rallied itself out of in the first meeting with Minnesota in Mackey Arena — Eifert made back-to-back threes, then Nojel Eastern a free throw to tie the game at 54 with eight-and-a-half minutes left.
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But, Minnesota scored the next nine points to take command again.
"It was us making mistakes, from an offensive and defensive perspective," Ryan Cline said of Minnesota's run that followed Purdue's. "We were taking bad shots, not doing very well in ball-screen (defense) — I don't think we did very well in ball-screen D at all the entire game. That's something we'll have to clean up for Saturday."
After Cline cut it to three with 3:06 left, with consecutive threes of his own, Purdue again couldn't sustain momentum, missing its next three shots and falling behind by seven again over the next minute.
Its final chance was dashed in the game's closing seconds, after Minnesota's inbound toward the far sideline went out of bounds. Eifert pursued it, but was bumped, and officials ruled the ball out on Purdue, then upheld the call after review.
"I just know I got hit and I didn't know who the ball went out on, if it hit me or him," Eifert said. "We collided at the same time. I knew they called it off on me, so it was going to be tough to overturn at the monitor and I'm sure that's what they went with. But I haven't seen (the replay) so I don't know."
Possession would have given Purdue a chance to tie it or win it at the buzzer, after Carsen Edwards made a three to put the Boilermakers in such a position.
Prior, however, the Boilermaker All-American had missed nine straight shots after the game was tied with eight-and-a-half minutes to play.
His 7-of-31 shooting was not out of character, as he was 7-of-40 over Purdue's last two road games, wins in Bloomington and Lincoln, and before those games, struggled at Maryland and Michigan State.
This time, Purdue couldn't overcome it, like it had in the most recent of those examples.
Now, Purdue travels to Northwestern Saturday for a one-game playoff to share the title with whoever wins this weekend's Michigan-Michigan State game in East Lansing.
"Like (Painter) just said, 'When we were 6-5, we'd take the position we're in right now," Cline said.
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