With just over a minute of game time left in their game against Illinois on Friday, the Purdue Boilermakers’ sights were set on a double-bye.
The Boilers held a 79-78 lead with 1:16 remaining, and a win would have clinched a top-four spot in the Big 10 standings. This year, that means they would have begun Big 10-tournament play with a quarterfinal game on Friday. That allows for at least one more day of rest than 11 other teams and would require just three wins to claim the championship. It was not meant to be.
The Boilermaker Special lost its steam and allowed the Fighting Illini to outscore them 10-1 over the final 76 seconds, losing 88-80. As a result of the interesting tie-breaking criterion to determine specific seedings, Purdue dropped to the sixth spot in the final standings. They will begin their run one day earlier on Thursday against the winner of the USC/Rutgers matchup. If the Boilers hope to win their second title in three years, they must play four games in as many days.
They only have themselves to blame.
After drubbing USC 90-72 at Mackey Arena on February 7, Purdue’s men’s basketball team was riding high. They were ranked 7th in the country with a 19-5 record, and the win over the Trojans was their fourth straight and vaulted them to the top of the Big 10.
From there, the Boilermakers limped to the season-ending finish line, losing the next four and five of their last seven games. In one month, Purdue went from leading the conference to finishing sixth and missing out on their double-bye status.
How did they go from a top-10 team to out of the first five in their conference? A deeper dive into those final seven games, especially when compared to their preceding four-game heater, brings to light an interesting, albeit understandable, statistical development.
Legendary Indiana head coach Bob Knight is credited with saying, “Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes.”
It stands to reason that if you commit fewer errors than your opponent, you give yourself the best chance for success.
Over the final 11 games of the season, Purdue resembled that remark to a tee.
In the Boilermakers’ four straight wins that spanned between Jan. 24 and Feb. 7, they took better care of the basketball than their opponents. They averaged 6.5 fewer turnovers than Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and USC during that stretch.
By comparison, they coughed the ball up 2.8 more times per game in their five losses since the USC game, 2.5 less in the two wins since Feb. 7. Overall this season, Purdue committed 1.6 fewer turnovers per game in their 31 games.
Following Purdue’s loss to Illinois, Boiler head coach Matt Painter bluntly opined why his team’s turnover rate was so steep.
“It’s a lack of concentration, because they (Illinois) didn’t force them,” vented Painter. “It’s like tennis, it was unforced errors. Especially, the two in the first half, we just turned it over.”
As William Shakespeare wrote in his play The Tempest,” What’s past is prologue.” What has transpired to this point, the good and bad, the ups and downs, has shaped Purdue’s destiny going forward.
In other words, the regular season is over and every team’s record has reset. Despite their turnover woes, the Boilermakers won more than two-thirds of their games (21-10), a feat most Big 10 teams would readily accept and appreciate. Purdue, however, is not “most” Big 10 teams, and taking a legitimate run at March Glory is what fans of the black and gold have come to expect.
That run begins in Indianapolis on Thursday night and hopefully lasts through late Sunday afternoon’s conference title game.
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our newsletter here. Check out Stadium Rant Original shows on our Youtube channel and subscribe! Give our socials Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok a follow for more great content!
