PDF: Purdue-Ohio State statistics

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — A month ago at this time, playing on the road, in the face of a home team making every shot it puts in the air, Purdue probably wilts, like it did at Florida State, like it did at Texas.

But on Wednesday night, the Boilermakers may have served up a glowing illustration of their growth, winning at Ohio State 79-67, a win that one point looked like it may come easily, then turned out anything but.

Earlier this season, this young — and new — Purdue team endured some basketball hardships in non-conference play, part of the reason its overtime win at Wisconsin seemed so cathartic at the moment.

This, this was more of that feeling, the Boilermakers winning out when it mattered most against a seemingly desperate Buckeye team in the midst of an outlier sort of shooting game.

“You can see we’re more used to that, playing in a hostile environment,” senior Grady Eifert said. “With such a young group, when you lose four seniors, going into that hostile environment might be a little eye-opening at first.

“We stress every day in practice being able to go on the road and get a win. That’s the hardest thing to do in this conference and something we need to keep striving to do.”

Had you told Purdue prior to the game that it would get Buckeye go-to guy Kaleb Wesson in debilitating foul trouble and hold him to just six points and one field goal in 16 minutes, it probably would have figured it would have rolled to a one-sided win.

It looked for a time like the Boilermakers might, after a 22-1 first half run turned the game on its side, decidedly in the visitors’ favor.

But it’s funny how things work out sometimes.

As happy as Purdue was to send Kaleb Wesson to the bench, the loss of its best player actually helped Ohio State, forcing the Buckeyes to go small.

That small lineup gave Purdue fits, raining threes — some of them reluctant heaves at the end of the shot clock, but counting for the same three points nonetheless. Ohio State made five of its first seven second-half threes and shot 8-of-16 for the half. Andre Wesson, Kaleb’s older brother, moved from his forward position to the 5 and scored most of his 22 points. He didn’t miss a shot until the game’s final minutes. He was 9-of-10.

“When they went small,” Coach Matt Painter said, “we couldn’t get a stop.”

A Purdue lead that peaked at 15 in the final two minutes of the first half was cut to just two with 10:15 remaining.

The Boilermakers, however, never gave up the lead, and after a bunch of cracks at pushing its lead past six, it broke through.

“After the 7:54 mark, we were in the huddle, and I was telling them, ‘We have to get over this hump,’” senior Ryan Cline said. “We had to push it to 10, to 12. We just couldn’t get over that hump. We finally did.”

Cline did it, knocking in a three with 4:16 left that pushed the score 72-63, about three minutes before his classmate delivered the figurative killshot.

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Grady Eifert’s three with a little more than a minute left pushed Purdue’s lead back to double-figures and effectively out of reach.

Purdue made the plays it probably wouldn’t have in November or December.

“It’s experience,” center Matt Haarms said. “At the start of the year, a lot of our guys hadn’t been through that situation, a tough road game where you have to grind it out.

“Now, you know. You value it more. You learn how important it is to be able to grind it out.”

Purdue largely has its foremost grinder to thank. Eifert was his standard loose-ball-magnet self, but also made two threes in the game’s final six minutes and 40 seconds, finishing with nine points, six rebounds and four assists.

Cline, playing his final game at Ohio State, where his father, Mike, was a Buckeye captain in the late ‘70s, scored 13 points, including some of the biggest shots of the game for Purdue.

Carsen Edwards scored 27 on just six made field goals (in 16 tries), but offset his five steals and four assists to some extent with seven turnovers. Uncharacteristically, Purdue turned it over 18 times, its most since that dreadful loss at Florida State, the very game that maybe Purdue is now benefiting in some small way from having endured.

“A loss really has to be a learning experience,” Haarms said, “and I think we showed that today, that we learned from those losses.”

For a while there, it sure didn’t look like it.

Purdue started the game 0-for-7 and didn’t score until Aaron Wheeler made a three three minutes and 21 seconds in.

“We sucked,” Haarms said. “We were taking horrible shots, everything we going bad, we weren’t playing good defense. You sit down and say, ‘We’re awful right now,’ and you tell yourself, ‘If we keep doing this, we’re going to be down 20 before you know it.’ We had to keep playing like we were down … and keep fighting.”

Eifert’s three, though, sparked the run of eight straight Purdue points that ultimately fed into the 22-1 run that took the Boilermakers from down 17-8 to up 30-18.

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