Purdue shows 'maturity,' bouncing back with sharp defensive performance
Dakota Mathias was adamant.
After watching film from last week’s loss to Iowa, a game in which Purdue allowed 83 points and 57 percent shooting, Mathias saw exactly why the Boilermakers struggled. Players didn’t follow the scouting report, didn’t fight enough through screens, didn’t stick to principles, weren’t physical enough throughout possessions, weren’t able to win one-on-one battles. Simply, they weren’t locked in.
But each of those elements were fixable, Mathias knew.
He and his teammates were just waiting for a chance to prove it.
They got it Tuesday when Illinois came to Mackey Arena. And they made good, limiting the Illini to 36 percent first-half shooting to spark a 14-point halftime lead in an eventual 91-68 victory.
“We watch it in film, learn from our mistakes, point out what it is and then we fix it. That’s a sign of a good team and a mature team. That’s good to see,” Mathias said. “We’re going to need that down the road and hopefully we can stick to that.
“(Defense) was definitely one of our emphasis coming into this game, especially after Iowa. I like the way we came out early in the second half, defensively getting stops and scoring right away. That was a good momentum change for us. I think our team defense, our ball screen defense was a big improvement from the other game. So that was just good to see the learning curve.”
Purdue’s offense was clicking all game, and that just allowed it to really take advantage of a pair of key Illinois scoring droughts.
In the first half, the Boilermakers held the Illini without a basket for about a three-minute stretch as Purdue expanded its lead from 9-5 to 19-5. Early in the second half, Illinois made only one basket from the 17:33 mark to 12:02, allowing the Boilermakers’ lead to balloon to 24 points.
“I felt like we played well,” sophomore Caleb Swanigan said of the defensive effort. “When our offense is clicking, you have to go against a set defense every time, it’s harder. We knocked out a lot of their stuff. It just came to them making shots. They made some, but for the most part, we just stayed discipline.”
Highlighting the defensive effort was Purdue’s collective effort on Illini leading scorer Malcolm Hill, who entered the game averaging 18.2 points. He had only 12 on 6-of-12 shooting Tuesday, being defended primarily by Mathias but also had Ryan Cline and Vincent Edwards at him at points.
Two of Hill’s six baskets came off transition on steals. He had a couple clean perimeter shots off screens and scored twice on drives to the basket by getting a good angle, but, largely, he couldn’t create enough off the dribble to get to the rim and wasn’t able to get free for pull-up and step-back jumpers.
And though Illinois didn’t use as much ball screen action as Iowa did to get Peter Jok free last week, that could be because Hill couldn’t get open off it when the Illini tried. Mathias, too, did a better job of fighting through screens all over the court, something he said he wanted to do after allowing Jok to get separation off baseline screens too often.
“I think we did a good job on (Hill) as a whole,” Mathias said. “I think we just made it tough on him. Give a lot of credit to Isaac (Haas) and Biggie, their ball screen defense was big-time (Tuesday). They made it tough on him. They didn’t give him angles, so that really helped.
“We stayed tight on a lot of their action. Different film we watched, people let him get open a little bit as far as out of bounds plays and things like that. I think we did a good job of sticking to the scouting report and making it tough on him. A big thing for us is big scorers like that, they’re going to get their points, but we want to make it on a lot of shot attempts. He had 12 on 12 attempts, so that’s good for us.”
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