HOUSTON - Anyone who read anything I wrote or heard anything I said about this weekend's game at Rice in advance of it knew that I hedged as much as possible in actually formally picking Purdue to win.
I know it's easy to say now at the risk of sounding like some blowhard revising history, but I really felt Rice would win, after Purdue just barely escaped against Middle Tennessee last weekend. That's the same Middle Tennessee, by the way, that was down 42-7 to Georgia Tech today.
I just didn't know enough about Rice to know whether or not it was actually good enough to beat a Big Ten opponent. And so, I didn't feel like I had enough info on the opponent to stick my neck out and publicly pick the Owls.
Turns out, Rice was good enough, but it needed a lot of help.
Purdue lost Saturday's game every bit as much as Rice won it, whether it was the Boilermakers dropping touchdown passes, jumping off-side on third down or, most notably and most inexplicably and inexcusably, allowing a chip-shot game-winning field goal to get blocked.
All this, along with a series of questionable game management decisions, left much to be talked about after Purdue's 24-22 loss to a team that hadn't beaten a BCS conference team since a two-point victory over Duke (which counts, I guess) a decade ago.
Yeah, there's much to talk about, but is there really anything to say?
Last week, even in victory, Purdue didn't look like a team that would win very many football games this seasons.
Its coaches knew it and talked this past week about improving significantly between Week 1 and Week 2.
This was the result.
The day started fittingly, with O.J. Ross dropping what should have been a 60-yard TD on a play Danny Hope said Purdue had spent all week ready to run right off the bat.
The day ended fittingly, with Purdue failing to execute a layup field goal in a hurried situation, a special teams failure for the ages for a program with a list of them dating back years.
In between, there were a whole bunch of self-inflicted wounds.
Again, what do you even say?
Purdue could be 0-2 right now. It could be 2-0, but the reality is that this is a team that could easily be 0-2 after a pair of games against programs Purdue wouldn't have dreamed of losing to not long ago.
It would be a physical impossibility for Purdue to lose next weekend to Southeast Missouri State, but after that comes a bye, then a whole lot of big-boy football.
Some good things happened today - Purdue, after all, did win the game without actually winning it - but at the end of the day, they were an afterthought given the result and those things that led to it, whether they were blown plays or decisions from the sideline, a series of curiosities that may or may not have mattered when all was said and done, but head-scratchers nonetheless.
It's difficult to understand how going for it on fourth-and-one at the 2 is a momentum-generating play but trying a 50-yard field goal, wind or no wind, with a kicker who's made them routine isn't.
Had Purdue kicked the game-winning field goal on third down, it could have taken its time. Had it made the kick, given it back to Rice with 20-some seconds left, then lost on some kind of miracle, I don't think anyone would be blaming the coach for it.
Purdue has no margin for error. And so games must be managed as well as possible and Purdue's players must come into Saturday afternoons well prepared in every phase.
When Travis Dorsch made that long field goal in a frantic situation at Minnesota in 2001, players talked afterward of the practice time dedicated to those situations "just in case."
Purdue lost today for a lot of reasons, but it came down to one play, a play it can execute in its sleep, but failed badly when hurried, pressed by the looming expiration of the game clock. It's hard to imagine there being that egregious a breakdown under any other set of circumstances on that particular kick.
But, there's no going back now.
Purdue can't let this one linger. With a scrimmage coming up against SEMO and a bye week to come, the Boilermakers have time to get this one out of their collective heads. But for a team that needs every win it can get whenever it can get it, Saturday's events in Houston could sting for some time.
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