21-21 after one quarter. UW is hitting threes and Purdue is going at UW's front line feeding MA and BOTH Harper's as Alaina made a really good power move from 8 feet contested to hit a jumper already in the game. Lots of playing time for the underclassmen already on both teams.
Purdue at Wisconsin game thread
- Thread starter MichaelRR
- Start date
57-44 Purdue at the end of the third. The seniors and the frosh are stepping up. Swanson is looking great on both ends and frankly she is not getting enough minutes IMO. Caitlyn 15, Ellis 13, MA still at 12 (what she had at halftime). Swanson and Terry with 5 pts each and 3 and 4 steals. Terry with 6 rbs and MA with 5.
Swanson has picked up her defense because she wants to play. Gritty player. Future is brighter because of our young guns. Carmin published an article yesterday and Madison clarified she is done this season. Never been my favorite player so I’m pleased to hear that. Players like Swanson bring an energy and desire to compete. Won’t miss watching Madison be lazy and indifferent. I can understand if she was stellar out of high school but outside of her freshman year at Purdue, she struggled the last 3 seasons. Jones, Swanson, Stevenson, Reynolds Jr will be the core moving forward and our program will take a huge step forward with our veterans moving on. Proud of Swanson today.
Final Purdue 79- Wisconsin 55 as Abby played out (21 pts, 4 rbs, 2A and 2S)for her parents in attendance. If we could have played with this intensity all year, we would not be missing the WNIT. Our D really bothered Bucky, especially the press.
I LOVED Swanson's play today, and the offense was just gravy (11 pts). She got her hands on a lot of balls, making steals possible for others in addition to the 3 she got for herself. She also tipped out a couple of rebounds for others to clean up. Jones, Smith, and Mila really look like they have hit the wall and are just not playing very well at all. Alaina seems to be playing with more confidence, but we still need at least 2 of the foursome of Mila, Alaina, Puryear, and McCarthy to be ready to play 25-30 minutes a night. Less minutes if 3 of the 4 are ready to step up and help out Mary Ashley who I am hopeful keeps improving over the off-season and resembles Williams as a soph. (Obviously MA won't be the shot blocker, she doesn't have the hops, but the double double machine that Williams is is well within MA's ability I believe.) Stevenson needs to stop up and be a more vocal leader next year but I think that will happen with time.
Also, I take exception with your characterization of Madison. She led this team as a sophomore until she badly twisted an ankle and then kept playing on it for a month just making it worse. She has never recovered from that, whether its physically or mentally she is about half the player she was her first two years and it is one of my biggest concerns/issues with KG that she kept playing an obviously limping Madison Layden rather than being the adult and making her sit until she was healed.
Agree. Off season will be great for our young guns.
Appreciate being able to respectfully disagree on Madison. There is absolutely no way a sprained ankle her sophomore season has impacted her ability to be successful the last two seasons. That sounds more like an excuse. Regardless, happy she is moving on.
I'm truthfully not 100% sold its still the injury, but something changed about that same time and she is a shadow of the player she was her first two years. I just didn't want it to stand that she was the same as a sophomore as the last two years because that is patently untrue.
Also appreciate that the latter half of this season has been mostly troll free and the adults can have differing opinions and it not devolve into flame wars over every stupid thing.
I'm probably still the worst on here for letting some irritate me over not watching the men's game, but I am trying.
Couldn't agree more on Swansons play today. CKG mentioned that she never played defense in HS so that might also explain her difficulty on that end(along with missing summer install/being a frosh/coming off injury), but today was a nice step towards being a good defender, even if it was against lesser competition.
I would lay off the "lesser competition" comment about a team above us in the current standings. Just saying.
I meant in regards to the rest of the big ten, it's not like we beat a NCAA tourney team or even a WNIT for that matter. Plus we beat them by 20+ both times. They really benefitted from a soft big ten schedule. Swap our schedules and we probably have another 2-3 wins.
It spoke volumes to me that CKG tells her she had to be able to play D to be on the floor, and she visibly is making strides. In just a few games. That speaks to her ability to take instruction and actively work to improve. She’s coachable.
I am not seeing that their schedule was softer than ours, we had about as soft a BT schedule as you could hope for this season.
I'd take rutgers, minny, and northwestern twice all day with our current team. Wisky drew IU, Nebraska, MSU, Osu, Psu all only once, all WNIT or better teams.
Last edited:
Don't get me wrong, I thought at the beginning of the season we really lucked out with our schedule, Iowa osu, Illinois, Michigan only once. Turned out nebraska and Msu were better than I expected. PSU as well.
That said, yes our schedule was still pretty soft, but I think wisconsins was softer and I think we've proved that by beating them handily twice and still being below them in the standings.
Can't wait for even more imbalance with 4 more teams added next season haha.
Wisconsin did not wait until the last handfull of games to play with any heart away from home. UMinn was on the bubble for being an NCAA team before Braun's injury. The best team we beat in conference this year was Wisconsin so far, Bucky beat PSU already and swept UMinn, with one of those wins coming before Braun was out and the other AT UMinn. Purdue has a total of three wins away from Mackey arena... Dayton, NU, and UWisc. I don't think we do as well with Bucky's schedule and our tin man team playing with no heart away from home than they did. And remember, the game in our house was without Williams, their stud post player.
Yeah no doubt Minny misses Braun, she's a stud. I dont mean for it to come off like I think we're a good team, we certainly are not. With a healthy Braun, they probably beat us 6-7 out of 10 times but I would take Minnesota to play twice instead of half of the upper echelon teams in conference this year. I know it's all if's and buts, BUT, we did have that game at Minnesota earlier with Braun.
I believe next year we play all teams once except our protected rivalry (almost certainly IU), right? So other than who you play at home/away the schedules will be pretty even.
_________________
Good point. My mindset was half into the football and Men's basketball when thinking about expansion to be honest. The 18 game schedule does seem to be better from a fairness standpoint though.
Last edited:
