Fletcher Loyer is near mid court, defending Max Klesmit, and Klesmit lowers a shoulder and pushes off. Loyer goes flying back, something he's gotten a reputation for in the Big Ten. It was a clear foul, and the official was standing barely three feet away from it. There was no other action to be distracted by, and it seemed like Klesmit submitted to frustration and saying, okay, I'm gonna take the offensive foul but you're getting off of me.

There was no whistle.

Loyer, Matt Painter a few feet away, and an entire crowd at Mackey Arena, all lost their minds.

The psychology of a missed call is difficult to overcome at times. We play sports, games, with agreed upon rules. Those rules are how the game works.

When they're blatantly disregarded, mistrust can build, frustration, and you're no longer thinking about what you need to do on the next play, but what happened on the last one.

This play occured during a final two and a half minute stretch in the first half that Purdue failed to score. It was another first half where Purdue let a double-digit lead dwindle to one possession.

It was the wrong call. Purdue let a lead slip and frustration build. It didn't score another point in the half.


Earlier in that half, just when Purdue was building its big lead, Kamari McGee had the unenviable task of trying to stay with Braden Smith out of an out of bounds play.


McGee had his hand outstretched, trying to hold or keep Smith within reach. In this chase, and with his arm extended, Purdue's Trey Kaufman-Renn's screen had the unfortunate placement of being right where McGee and his extended arm were headed. The hand connected, firmly, at full speed, with Kaufman-Renn's lower regions and the whistle came abruptly. What followed was a length review that led the officials to enact the no scrotum touching rule that meant a flagrant two would be called and McGee would be ejected from the game.

It was the wrong call. It woke Wisconsin up and the Badgers played maybe the best 27 minutes of its season.

Purdue and Wisconsin might share more in common than any other two programs in the Big Ten. Both have seen their head coaches replace legends to uneven results in the immediate seasons after.

After the game, Greg Gard referenced the similarities and how he reached out and leaned on Matt Painter and his experience replacing Gene Keady as Gard replaced Bo Ryan.

Painter has been on the other side of creating a program in his own name. Greg Gard appears to be getting to that place as well.

What Wisconsin did to Purdue wasn't just an upset. Purdue's offense never stopped working. It scored 84 points and Trey Kaufman-Renn was unstoppable inside, but Wisconsin, Wisconsin was just better. Not just on the floor, but in their heads and hearts. When the whistle went against Wisconsin, the Badgers didn't show frustration. It found resolve.

"I told our guys," Matt Painter said after the game. "They gave you a lesson in maturity. I thought they were mentally and physically tougher. That's something I write on the board every game. You've gotta be mentally and physically tougher than your opponent and they were tougher than us in those two areas."

Late in the second half, Purdue was still trailing and Fletcher Loyer had just knocked down two free throws. Matt Painter went to the bench, subbing in CJ Cox for defensive purposes and taking Loyer out. Wisconsin missed just two shots inside the arc the entire game and its offense was targeting Loyer on the perimeter. Though to be fair, everyone was getting some from the Badgers and everyone was giving it for the Badgers.

But Loyer, uncharacteristically, couldn't believe he was being taken out. Loyer is one of Purdue's leaders, its most vocal leader, and has only really known winning at Purdue. He's never lost the conference, and this was only the third time in his career a loss was coming for him at Mackey Arena.

Perhaps it was all that, or the impossibility of Wisconsin making everything, or the score, or the whistle, or anything else, but it was a moment of honest reaction that spoke to a much greater burden. Loyer shook his head, quietly rebelled as he made his way to the seat. On the next play, Purdue played about 25 seconds of perfect defense. Then Cox got beat on the last second by a cut from Wisconsin and gave up a lay up.

Loyer shook his head on the bench.

After the game Loyer had this to say about their frustrations on the court: "You work really hard to put yourself in position to win the Big Ten Championship, and then, when you let a team score 94 points, you don't do your job, and it sucks."

Purdue has legitimately wilted to pressure just once in Loyer's career. It was an NCAA Tournament game, his first, against a lowly seeded Fairleigh Dickinson team.

But pressure, success, it doesn't just absolve by one season of redemption. The currency of winning and the expectations are exponential. Each next game is the most important, especially following a loss, especially when the Big Ten standings are starting to slip from your control.

It was an unusual display of mental frustrations from Purdue as a whole. Something that I asked Painter about after the game, a phrasing that he agreed to as a good way to put what happened today.

Matt Painter's answer wasn't just good, it was great, and it was honest, but also hopeful. Purdue will be better from this, and that starts now:

“You’re getting into February, you’re competing, you’re trying to jockey to get yourself in the best position for the NCAA Tournament, you’re trying to win a big ten championship and it gets hard," Matt Painter said. "But it’s hard for everybody. It’s hard for everybody. You’ve gotta have a resolve about you when you miss shots. You’ve gotta have a resolve about you, a mental toughness about you, when you dons't get the calls that you like. Whatever the adversary might be, you’ve gotta be able to push through that adversary and fight and then encourage other people. I talked afterwards, I just said, you’ve gotta quit talking to officials. You’ve gotta quit showing body language. You’ve gotta quit being emotional. Ain’t nothing wrong with being passionate, but don't be emotional. Stay with it, keep fighting, stick to our rules, we just didn’t have the same discipline that they had."

"You can go back and say they made more shots or whatever, but I liked their resolve. It was better than ours.That being said I’ve gotta do a better job of getting them ready. I gotta do a better job getting them mentally and physically hooked up to play better."

"That’s what you do, you go back to the drawing board. You lose at Michigan, you lose this game, like hey it doesn’t matter if we would have won. You still go back and look at things and be honest about things. But I like our guys. I think we have a good team but just collectively have to be better, that includes me.”

Expectations are a privilege, one that this Purdue team has created for itself in the last three seasons, but what's that old saying about the crown?

Success is also a weight. On Saturday, for the first time at home in the regular season in Braden Smith, Trey Kaufman-Renn, and Fletcher Loyer's careers, the weight seemed to get to them.

But if their sophomore season is any indication, Purdue's juniors do their best work when they have to pick themselves up off the floor.