KANSAS CITY — This isn't the way a season like Purdue's should end, snowed under beneath a 15-minute onslaught from an elite team playing with a hilariously unfair homecourt advantage with everyone's season on the line.
But that's basketball, that's the NCAA Tournament and that's life, I suppose, that a season that saw this team win 27 games, win the Big Ten, exorcise its postseason demons and ride college basketball's greatest individual story to this point can end branded with a loss of historic proportion.
There is no way imaginable to dismiss a 33-point loss, but there was some modest cosmetics there in the sense that for 25-30 minutes, Purdue belonged and, yes, that matters, but those final 10 might be the ones that stick with these guys, an embarrassing stretch in which a proud Boilermaker team played the role of Washington Generals, just kind of there to get dunked on, driven past and to have shots made in their faces.
It was a surreal run of basketball by Kansas, a team with the best guard in the country and one of the top pro prospects in the country, and they're two different people. Oh, and Devonte' Graham will get drafted too. He served noticed of his own abilities after the game devolved into layup-drill time.
Look, you know that Purdue is better than tonight's optics. Most do. Most also understand that Kansas is ridiculous. Teams from that small fraternity of basketball mills often are. But this one might be different. Those guards are unreal. Josh Jackson is probably a mutant.
Purdue is a good team, a really good team, with one great player and a bunch of very good, highly experienced ones.
This was the difference between very good team and elite team, and it's too bad for Purdue it ended up the way it did.
I thought Purdue could beat Kansas. I didn't think it would, but I thought it could. This shocked me. Purdue is better than this, and again, it did prove it could hang for 55-60 percent of this game.
I don't know if anyone was beating Kansas tonight. Yes, Purdue played a role in its own demise, but a modest one. It turned the ball over and gave up too many offensive rebounds, but that's Kansas, too. That's Kansas contributing to that stuff.
It was all Kansas tonight, in every sense. And it's too bad for Purdue, because this was a terrific, memorable season and now this could be an enduring memory.
I guess it can take some twisted solace in the fact that no one thing mattered all that much. No one play, no one coaching decision, no one foul, no one turnover … none of it mattered. It's better to burn out than to fade away, I guess, and the burn out on Thursday night was spectacular.
Purdue is way better than it showed tonight.
The scary thing is the thought that Kansas is just as good as it showed tonight.
But that's basketball, that's the NCAA Tournament and that's life, I suppose, that a season that saw this team win 27 games, win the Big Ten, exorcise its postseason demons and ride college basketball's greatest individual story to this point can end branded with a loss of historic proportion.
There is no way imaginable to dismiss a 33-point loss, but there was some modest cosmetics there in the sense that for 25-30 minutes, Purdue belonged and, yes, that matters, but those final 10 might be the ones that stick with these guys, an embarrassing stretch in which a proud Boilermaker team played the role of Washington Generals, just kind of there to get dunked on, driven past and to have shots made in their faces.
It was a surreal run of basketball by Kansas, a team with the best guard in the country and one of the top pro prospects in the country, and they're two different people. Oh, and Devonte' Graham will get drafted too. He served noticed of his own abilities after the game devolved into layup-drill time.
Look, you know that Purdue is better than tonight's optics. Most do. Most also understand that Kansas is ridiculous. Teams from that small fraternity of basketball mills often are. But this one might be different. Those guards are unreal. Josh Jackson is probably a mutant.
Purdue is a good team, a really good team, with one great player and a bunch of very good, highly experienced ones.
This was the difference between very good team and elite team, and it's too bad for Purdue it ended up the way it did.
I thought Purdue could beat Kansas. I didn't think it would, but I thought it could. This shocked me. Purdue is better than this, and again, it did prove it could hang for 55-60 percent of this game.
I don't know if anyone was beating Kansas tonight. Yes, Purdue played a role in its own demise, but a modest one. It turned the ball over and gave up too many offensive rebounds, but that's Kansas, too. That's Kansas contributing to that stuff.
It was all Kansas tonight, in every sense. And it's too bad for Purdue, because this was a terrific, memorable season and now this could be an enduring memory.
I guess it can take some twisted solace in the fact that no one thing mattered all that much. No one play, no one coaching decision, no one foul, no one turnover … none of it mattered. It's better to burn out than to fade away, I guess, and the burn out on Thursday night was spectacular.
Purdue is way better than it showed tonight.
The scary thing is the thought that Kansas is just as good as it showed tonight.
