Clutch defense carries Boilermakers past Maryland

After the Terrapins found themselves with the ball with three seconds on the clock with a chance to tie or win it, Nojel Eastern blocked Anthony Cowan’s three-pointer, right in front of Maryland’s bench.

For a while there, Purdue was struggling with Maryland’s size and strength on the offensive glass.

It found as effective a workaround as there is.

It didn’t let Maryland shoot.

The Boilermakers forced four shot-clock violations, none bigger than the shutout they pitched with just under five minutes left, which signaled the beginning of a dominant stretch of defense for Purdue.

Jalen Smith made a jump shot with 4:20 left to play, cutting Purdue’s five-point lead down to three. It was Maryland’s last field goal, as it then closed the game 0-for-4 with two turnovers.

Purdue wasn’t much better, struggling to make the play needed to put the game away at the offensive end.

Didn’t matter.

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This winning formula didn’t require, you know, offense.

“It felt like (Purdue) had six guys out there,” Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said. “They were everywhere.”

Maryland shot only 35 percent for the game and committed 17 turnovers.

Cowan, the priority matchup for Purdue, was 4-of-17 from the floor, matched mostly against Eastern.

“I think we were just hungry, hungry for a win,” center Matt Haarms said. “I think you could see it in all the guys, that we wanted it, that we wanted a piece of them from the start. When we’re the first ones to hit, we can be a really good defensive team, and we stayed a lot more disciplined. It’s just that hunger, we need to keep that. We had it last year.

"I think this was a game where we really need to build from this and show this every single game.”

Purdue stifled the Terrapins, but it wasn’t a straight line to the Boilermakers’ first Big Ten win of the season.

Maryland led by as many as eight in the first half, but Purdue closed the first half by forcing a shot-clock violation, then getting a three from the game’s surprise star, Aaron Wheeler, who scored 15 on 6-of-7 shooting. Those three to end the first half made it a 34-30 Terp lead at the break.

In a back-and-forth second, Wheeler’s three with 11-and-a-half minutes left gave Purdue its first lead since early in the first half, then another three shortly thereafter tied it after Maryland had gone back up by three.

The Terrapins ran out of answers then, though.

Carsen Edwards’ pull-up three-pointer with 6:53 left gave Purdue the lead for good, as it turned out. Edwards then fed Wheeler in transition, then found Haarms slipping a screen for a dunk to cap a 7-0 Purdue run that provided the cushion it needed to survive the rockfight that followed over the final four minutes.

Edwards scored 20 points.

Purdue got just enough rebounds, made just enough free throws to survive.

With three seconds left, Cowan intentionally missed the second of two free throws, and the rebound slipped out of bounds off either Carsen Edwards or Haarms, giving Maryland one last crack at it.

Eastern blocked it.

“I just tried to stay on my feet,” Eastern said, “and get a tip on the ball or at least contest it the best I could.”

And with that, Purdue left the Mackey Arena floor in relief, having not only won a critical, critical early season game, but done so in a particularly satisfying manner.

“That grinding mentality is something that comes with experience,” Haarms said. “It’s great to get a win like this. That grinding is so important at the end of a game when they can’t get it going and you can’t get it going. It’s, ‘We’ve got to figure out a way to win,’ even if the shots aren’t falling.”

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