Boilermakers claimed championship status when it was least expected
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EVANSTON, Ill. — After the final buzzer sounded on Purdue’s 70-57 win at Northwestern Saturday evening, the 11th-ranked Boilermakers’ 24th Big Ten title was secure and a litany of emotions released.
Matt Haarms bounced from embrace to embrace, consuming teammates and coaches and support staff with those endless arms of his.
“I just wanted to hug anybody, show them love, tell them I love them, tell them how much they meant to me through this season,” Haarms said later.
For Grady Eifert, the Boilermaker legacy and lifelong fan, he may have thought back to the bulk of his career prior to this season, when he sat behind NBA players and played only a bit role. This season, he contributed profoundly to making this all possible, months after legitimate questions abounded after Purdue lost one of the deepest, most productive and most substantive senior classes in its history.
“If you can a Big Ten championship in your rebuilding year,” Eifert said, “I think you’re doing something pretty special.”
For Carsen Edwards, he stood on the floor amidst the celebration, waiting to do a television interview, pointing to any one of several clusters of the thousands of Purdue fans that split Welsh-Ryan Arena’s loyalties in half, at least, on this day. The crowd responded in kind to the Boilermaker All-American, who scored 21 points with five assists, and made key plays through foul trouble in the final 10 minutes to finalize this improbable achievement.
Then, there’s Ryan Cline, who along with fellow senior Eifert, immortalizes himself in Purdue history with a tangible legacy certain to endure.
Purdue takes great pride in its history of Big Ten championships — it’s won more than anyone — and those feats tend to be inextricably linked to the seniors who helped make them happen.
“I’m sitting there thinking, ‘I deserve this,’” Cline remembers. “A lot of people counted me out in particular, and didn’t think I could be the leader I became. I’m proud of myself for where I’ve come from to where I am now. It was all about taking in the moment for me personally.”
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For Cline, it was a sense of validation. For Haarms, among others, joy.
For Matt Painter, himself forged by the history and tradition of Purdue basketball, his thoughts turned to Cline and Eifert.
“That’s what I think of, the guys who have stuck it out," said Painter, triggering another of his post-game press conference soliloquies on the state of, well, things. "It’s so easy to leave now when things don’t go your way. It’s all set for you. If you don’t like high school, go to prep school and if you don’t like that prep school, go to another prep school, and if you don’t like it when you go to a four-year (school), then go to a JUCO, then another four-year, then become a fifth-year (transfer).
“The guys who need the attention are the guys who when things didn’t go their way, they stay, get a degree and have success, because once you get into life, marriage, having a job, you can’t just roll when things get tough.”
Things did get difficult for Purdue this season, long before earning a title it'll share with either Michigan or Michigan State. The Boilermakers were 6-5 at one point, and looked thoroughly Bubble-bound, at best.
Coaches and players now look back at that time with a nod to a formidable schedule — one of the nation's toughest — and the narrow nature of those losses as proof of their potential. Still, that was anything but championship form.
“I think we always had it," Cline said. "We finally found it.”
It started after the holidays, following a bottoming-out in a dreadful loss in Indianapolis to Notre Dame, who turned out to be wholly mediocre this season.
“We realized what we needed to get fixed," Eifert said, "kind of looked ourselves in the mirror after that Notre Dame loss, started practicing harder, everyone staying connected, playing their game, and that’s when we kind of took off.”
It was fitting that Purdue won this Big Ten title on the road, because the Boilermakers — who were unbeaten in Mackey Arena — made themselves champions with their ability to win close games, and win "ugly" at times, elsewhere.
The Boilermakers' Big Ten title hopes crystalized after improbable wins at Indiana and Nebraska, long after an overtime win at Wisconsin changed Purdue's season, and an OT win at Penn State nearly deep-sixed it, but didn't.
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