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Little did Purdue know on March 7 as it left Keady Court following a loss that in many ways reflected its whole season — an overtime defeat vs. Rutgers — that that was it, that the season was over.

Such was the case, though, for the Boilermakers and most everyone else in the college basketball world, as the COVID-19 outbreak cut short not just the NCAA hoops season but stopped sports at all levels — and, in a lot of ways, life in general — in its tracks.

The Boilermakers finished up 16-15, perfectly reflective of the sort of season it was, the results varying widely from game to game, week to week, venue to venue.

It was a season defined by inconsistency, sharp turns coming for better and worse when they might have been least expected.

After Purdue lost to Rutgers, a critical, critical game toward the Boilermakers' at-large NCAA Tournament hopes, played in a Mackey Arena, and played within a free throw of a different outcome, that was probably the bottom, a golden opportunity having come and gone.

Rewind a few weeks.

It was Feb. 8 that Purdue may have peaked, walking off the floor at Assembly Hall a 74-62 winner at Indiana, marring Bob Knight Day — as we'll call it — on its rival's campus and landing the sort of road victory the Boilermakers hadn't previously appeared capable of.

It was Purdue's third win in a row. The Boilermakers looked like they were well on their way to locking down their place in the NCAA Tournament. Of the final seven games, four would be played in Mackey Arena.

Purdue went on to lose three of those home games, draining a big-time win at ranked Iowa of its value by dropping that Rutgers game, at home, next time out.

That was the season in a nutshell, but Purdue concluded that season with great unknown. While it seemed to believe that its only path to the NCAA Tournament was to win the Big Ten Tournament, it can't be certain. Perhaps three wins in Indy would have done the trick, maybe even two.

Purdue could have been a fascinating case study in this new era of NCAA Tournament selection.

The Boilermakers, again, were just a game over .500 overall but closed the season 32nd in the NET rankings, with the Big Ten's gravitational pull at its side. Had the Boilermakers beaten Rutgers and finished 10-10 in the league, then won one game in Indy, that very likely would have put them in the Tournament.

That was the difference between the NCAA Tournament and a presumed NIT bid, and the best face to put on this season, one in which Purdue proved it was capable of so much more — from dominant, dominant wins over good teams at home, to a few highly competitive near-misses against good teams in non-conference, to two really high-level Big Ten road wins — but never could find the consistency to bridge the gap between this team's potential and its identity.

Purdue still might have gone to the NCAA Tournament.

We'll never know.

There will be no NCAA Tournament. There was no Big Ten Tournament, beyond a couple of Day 1 games that didn't matter, but sure put a scare in everyone. College basketball is currently the same as everything else: Suspended indefinitely.

Purdue will remember this season forever for its unprecedented ending.

And undoubtedly for what could have been, but wouldn't have been anyway, even if it was.

Now, a look back.

Mackey Arena has long chewed up opponents and spit them out, often good ones, and the best version of Purdue that Keady Court often brings about was seen often this season.

Virginia, Michigan State, Iowa and Wisconsin were all ranked at the time of their visits to Purdue. The Spartans and Badgers went on to earn shares of the Big Ten title. All four teams would have made the NCAA Tournament had there been one.

Purdue's average margin of victory in those four home games: 28.3 points.

The mountaintop among them: Virginia.

While the Michigan State win was really something — keep in mind, the Spartans were considered one of college basketball's elite teams at that time before eventually falling out of the top 25 — and the Iowa knee-capping seemed like a sign of an enduring turnaround for Purdue, the Virginia game was one of the most special nights Mackey Arena has seen in modern years.

Played against the backdrop of last season's remarkable Cavalier win over Purdue in the Elite Eight in Louisville, the Big Ten/ACC Challenge meeting was one of the most anticipated games in Mackey Arena in years.

Make no mistake: Purdue and Virginia both looked very different from the teams that met a few months earlier in one of the great games ever in the NCAA Tournament, but that didn't make the Boilermakers' romp of then-unbeaten and fifth-ranked UVA any less enjoyable — or cathartic — for all those with a stake in it.

This tells you what sort of highs Purdue experienced during this topsy-turvy season: Purdue won at Indiana as part of another regular season sweep of the Hoosiers, and did so in most surprising fashion, on a day the college basketball world was largely focused on Bloomington because of Knight's long-awaited return.

And that may not have been the most memorable win of Purdue's season.

Purdue didn't have the regular season it wanted to have this year, but this year's highlights stack up against just about any regular season that came before it.

The lowest moment of Purdue's season may have been its last, in learning, largely as the public did, that its season was over, that its last chance to play its way into the NCAA Tournament wouldn't come, and at the very least there would be no NIT games to play.

That was it.

It was over.

That must have hurt.

But, Purdue had less at stake during this month to come than it did in years past. Even if Purdue had made the NCAA Tournament, little would have been expected of it, based off the season of ups and downs it had just endured. An NIT run might have been fun and worthwhile, but this is a program with standards lofty enough to mark NIT success as a backhanded compliment.

While Purdue's highs were extraordinary, unprecedented in some cases, its lows were proportional.

On Jan. 5, the Boilermakers lost 63-37 at Illinois, by several measures one of the worst outings ever for Purdue.

Months later, Purdue faced a must-win sort of situation in Mackey Arena against a Michigan team it had taken to double overtime in Ann Arbor earlier in the season. The result: A seemingly uninspired 71-63 loss, as Purdue lost three of its final four home games, unbelievable by prior program standards.

Neither were the low point, nor was the 18-point lead that got away at Marquette, the overtime loss vs. Florida State or Purdue literally dropping the ball in a narrow home loss vs. Texas.

That distinction goes to the Dec. 15 loss at Nebraska, a 70-56 outcome in which the first 10 minutes were an unmitigated disaster, and the final six even more so.

Real time, that felt like a loss that would haunt the Boilermakers all season. When all was said and done — or when most was said and done, considering how the season actually ended — Nebraska went down as Purdue's only bad loss of the season.

Nebraska, essentially tanking in Year 1 under Fred Hoiberg, finished the season on a 17-game losing streak.

That was Purdue's season, a maddening blend of surreal highs and distressing lows.

That was the story of a Boilermaker season that ended before its final chapter could be penned.

How it would have ended, no one knows.

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