2/21/2017 basketball Edit

Purdue rides Cline's shooting, plain luck in averting upset at Penn State

Brian Neubert • BoilerUpload

GoldandBlack.com staff

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Throughout this season, Purdue's so often risen to the level of its highest-profile opponents, putting together a Big Ten résumé worthy of a championship.

It's been the filler games, though, where the Boilermakers have seemingly been uneven in handling their reality as a target for upsets, one that should expect opponents' best shot. It's bitten Purdue before — its Big Ten losses run counter in stature to its wins.

That storyline applied again Tuesday night at Penn State, where No. 14 and Big Ten co-leader Purdue won 74-70 in overtime, then spoke of "luck" and "being fortunate" on its way out the door, its coach even dropping a casual "thank the lord" in his post-game comments.

Ryan Cline made back-to-back threes in overtime to steward the Boilermakers and their conference championship hopes through near-disaster.

"Ryan saved us," Matt Painter said. "… Thank the lord that Cline knocked those shots down."

Those back-to-back triples were the deciding plays, in effect, on a night in which Purdue demonstrably was outplayed, outshot, outhustled and outrebounded by the Nittany Lions, only to hold an eight-point lead with a little more than three minutes left in regulation, only to blow that, reminiscent of last season's demons.

"It was one of those rare games where one team outplays the other one and plays harder and they lose the game, especially on their home court," Painter said. "I think the only category we won tonight was the only one that's important and that's the final score."

Purdue was lucky.

It played the polar opposite of its best in so many ways, with Caleb Swanigan finishing with a surprisingly mortal 10 points on five shots and sitting for nearly the final seven-and-a-half minutes of the first half, by coach's decision.

Purdue's guards, rock-steady all season, were uncharacteristically shaky, with P.J. Thompson and Dakota Mathias totaling eight turnovers — grounds for identity-theft suspicions based on past results — and Carsen Edwards shot 1-for-8.

"You just have to have luck. The ball just has to bounce your way sometimes," said forward Vincent Edwards, who led six double-digit scorers with 14 points. "There's no other way to put it. We did some things. We got some stops, made some shots, but it can be the same result as the Nebraska loss, the same result as the Iowa loss. They both could have been wins, but it didn't bounce our way. This one, it happened to be our day."

Yes, there was luck involved.

"In some ways, you know, we really shouldn't have won that game," Cline said. "But obviously we were resilient, especially at the end. … Hopefully in the next game we don't come out as sluggish."

After Cline's back-to-back threes — "after I hit the first one in overtime, if I got another clean look, I was shooting it," he said — Purdue's final possession of OT, up two, resulted in Isaac Haas missing everything with a hook shot.

But the errant shot was batted around and found its way to Thompson outside the three-point arc, with two seconds on the shot clock. Even if Thompson knew the shot clock was about to go off, he may not have been able to get the ball up.

Purdue was stuck, about to give Penn State the ball back with a chance to tie it or win it at the end of the first OT.

Then, Tony Carr — the freshman who'd carried the Lions into overtime in a 21-point performance, thriving late while Purdue seemed tight — fouled Thompson, sending Thompson to the line, where he made both, and bailing the Boilermakers out.

Again, on the road, Purdue found a way to win. This time, though, it's different. This wasn't College Park or Bloomington, formidable places to play in NCAA Tournament-like atmospheres.

Penn State has been a handful for every ranked team that's come into Bryce Jordan this season, and it very much was for Purdue.

But while crediting the Nittany Lions for a superior effort, Purdue also likely left State College self-aware enough to know that this easily could have — should have — struck a critical blow to what are now very reasonable Big Ten title hopes.

"It says a lot about us (to win)," Swanigan said, "but at the same time it says a lot about the weaknesses we played with today. We have to grow from those."

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