All told, Purdue didn't have the season it necessarily wanted to have, finishing a season cut short at 16-15, outside the projected NCAA Tournament field.

Its highlights this season, though, stacked up favorably against just about any regular season that came before It.

A look back at some of those highlights.

Purdue hosted defending national champion Virginia, preseason title favorite Michigan State, eventual Big Ten co-champion Wisconsin and nationally ranked Iowa and beat all of them In a manner previously virtually unprecedented against such competition.

Later, it won at Iowa, relatively comfortably no less.

All that being said, Purdue's best, or at least most impressive, performance, for a full 40 minutes, came elsewhere.

Winning at Indiana is never easy, and Bloomington has perhaps never been as emotionally charged as it was on Feb. 8, when Bob Knight finally returned to Assembly Hall and IU became the focus of the college basketball world's attention for a few hours.

Purdue and Indiana looked evenly matched headed into that game, but Purdue had done very little away from Mackey Arena to that point to give much reason to expect success.

It came. Purdue made every big shot it took that day, made every big play it needed to make in crunch time, carried out its defensive game plan beautifully and won, again, comfortably, 74-62.

Wins over Indiana are always season highlights for Purdue. Wins at Indiana are usually even more so. A win at Indiana under those circumstances was really something.

This was the Trevion Williams Purdue hopes will soon be the Trevion WIlliams.

The Boilermakers didn't win at Michigan on Jan. 9 — falling in double overtime, 84-78 — but it did get an up-close look at what its sophomore big man is capable of.

With fellow center Matt Haarms sidelined by a bruised hip suffered in the first half, Williams carried the Boilermakers in the second half, and the overtimes, finishing with 36 points and 20 rebounds.

Purdue's had a number of great college big men come through its program in recent years. None of them ever got 36 in a game.

Matt Painter has often spoken of Williams as a player with potential to be "one of the best players In the country," and on that night, Williams not only looked like it, but carried himself as such.

When Big Ten play resumed way back in January, Purdue was trailing Minnesota 62-59, with less than 30 seconds left. The Gophers had the ball, but quickly turned it over, giving Purdue new life.

Eric Hunter's two-point shot was blocked by Daniel Oturu, but the Boilermakers fell upward as Trevion Williams grabbed the offensive rebound and instinctively threw it out to Sasha Stefanovic, who just as instinctively situated himself behind the three-point arc and buried a three as he drifted backward.

The Boilermakers went on to win in double-overtime.

That was the biggest shot of the season, but a close second would clearly be Stefanovic's game-winner at Northwestern, where Purdue closed the game on an 11-0 run to avert a dreadful loss.

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