8/28/2017 basketball Edit

Vincent Edwards' dominance sends Purdue to gold-medal game

Brian Neubert • BoilerUpload

GoldandBlack.com staff

@brianneubert

Analysis ($): Purdue-Serbia

Vincent Edwards rolled his ankle against Israel. It looked bad. It didn't stop the Boilermaker senior from finishing out his team's overtime win, but you had to worry if you were Purdue that sitting idle between games would worsen the situation.

Nope.

Thanks to the forward's extraordinary performance less than 24 hours after that injury, the gold medal is within Purdue's reach, following its 93-61 rout of Serbia in the World University Games semifinals.

Edwards scored 23 first-half points and finished with 31 in vaulting Purdue, as Team USA, moved to within one win of winning the event. He made 12 of his 15 shots.

"It was just me picking me spots," Edwards said. "We did a good job ball-screening and getting me open shots and finding me in transition. I wasn't trying to force anything, playing my game, just playing off everyone else."

All summer, Purdue's broken practice-floor huddles with talk of gold medals. Now, it's there for the taking. The Boilermakers didn't know immediately following the Serbia game whether they'd face Lithuania or Latvia for the gold medal, but what it does know is that it's playing at a level worthy of a champion.

Coming off a gritty OT win over the Israelis — an excellent, experienced and skilled team that might prove to be the best team Purdue will have faced in Taipei — Purdue fell behind Serbia 5-0, then, as if shot out of a cannon, rolled over its seventh opponent in as many games.

Serbia shot 38 percent.

"I thought our athleticism really bothered them," Coach Matt Painter said after winning a game played between two teams coming off overtime wins, "and for whatever reason we had a better recovery coming off our game last night. You could tell after a while they had some guys who'd logged a lot of minutes. We wanted to keep a lot of pressure on them, keep the heat on them and keep coming after them.

"I thought we had good concentration and were very competitive. That's what we have to do tomorrow. Whether we play Lithuania or Latvia, we're going to have to compete at a very high level."

It's rolling offensively in particular.

Purdue shot 50 percent from the floor and made 13 more threes on 27 attempts against Serbia.

"(I like) how we're playing, the pace, with this 24-second shot clock," Edwards said. "We've talked about how we want to get out and run more and this gives us our chance to show what we can do. We shared the ball, moved the ball around and we're shooting the ball well. We're playing together."

Carsen Edwards, fresh off a 36-point game, finished with 16, six assists and four steals.

Edwards and Edwards have proven a formidable combo for Purdue. Against Israel, Carsen had 36; against Serbia, Vincent got his 31 without having to play in the fourth quarter.

"It's doing it better," Edwards said of his ankle shortly after the final buzzer after the Serbia game. "I'm icing it right now. It's all I can do, keep icing it, keep treating it. That's all I can do right now."

For the 40 minutes prior, however, he did everything.

"His versatility has really been troublesome for a lot of teams in this tournament," Painter said. "When you start as a freshman and play a lot and you get to your junior year and you're all-conference as a junior, your senior year is supposed to be your best year of college basketball and that's the way it's trending for him.

"He's really played well here and done a lot of things for our team to win."

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