Story No. 6: Purdue wins Big Ten for second time in three years
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Isaac Haas was gone. So were Dakota Mathias, Vince Edwards and P.J. Thompson from a team that won a school single-season record 30 games and advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2017-18. This was thought to be a rebuilding year for Purdue.
It wasn’t.
Instead, it was a year when the Boilermakers added hardware to their trophy case and continued to show they were a premier Big Ten program.
Purdue confounded experts by winning the program’s second Big Ten championship in three years. Credit Carsen Edwards, who left West Lafayette a year early as an all-time great.
The All-American guard led the way, pacing the league is scoring with a vanguard style. The junior was equal parts exhilaration and exasperation who at times was a one-man dervish. But he always was 100 percent electric and must-watch TV. Few players in the nation could shoot or score with the same aplomb as the player called "Boogie."
At one time last season, winning the league title seemed like folly. Purdue was 6-5 after losing to a middling Notre Dame team in the Crossroads Classic in Indianapolis in December. Purdue looked like it was going nowhere. Matt Painter delivered some hard truth in the postgame locker room … and the Boilermakers never looked back, winning 17 of the last 20 in the regular season.
“More than anything, our guys improved, our guys got better," Painter said after his squad clinched the title with a win at Northwestern in the finale. "We've got some young guys that have to grow up and play off the bench and play a role. ... There's a lot of selfishness that comes because you're young and you want to play and you don't play very much, but our guys were really professional, they were really good about it.”
This team’s development and evoluation were almost as impressive as the final results, which saw Purdue come within a whisker of making its first Final Four since 1980 after losing an instant classic OT game to Virginia in the Elite Eight.
Players fell in line and embraced roles. From Edwards unabashed knack for scoring, to Matt Haarms infectious energy, to Grady Eifert's grit, to Ryan Cline’s deadly shot … these players lost themselves in the team. And everyone benefited.
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