PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas — Time will tell, I guess, if this was one of those days for Purdue, one of those opposite days where up is down, cold is hot and everything a team had been doing well before suddenly it doesn't.
No one played particularly well for Purdue. No one.
It turned the ball over too much and gave up enough offensive rebounds to where it got to the point where you legitimately thought at times that its best bet to rebound would be to wait 'til Tennessee came down with the ball, then strip it.
Its offense, a surgical exercise to this point, was disrupted, Carsen Edwards never found the second-half ying to his first-half yang, Dakota Mathias turned the ball over, Isaac Haas got three rebounds in 24 minutes, Vincent Edwards shot 23 percent and with the game on the line, two seniors botched a defensive assignment, leading to the game being tied.
Ugly. As. Hell.
Above, I italicized the words "to this point," because it's phrase that if you take everything I write, paste it into a Word doc, then search those keywords, it'll freeze your computer, or melt it.
Because it's an important qualifier in college sports and especially basketball this time of year. Everything's fluid.
Should Purdue play bad in Game 5 with all these seniors after a summer's worth of meaningful experience? I think it's fair to say no, that it shouldn't.
But what happened today doesn't change much in terms of what Purdue is, unless this starts happening a bunch and then the term "soft" will start coming up.
But Purdue got it handed to it today, from toughness and effort perspectives. That was Tennessee's hope, to use its strength to best Purdue's skill in the frontcourt, to use Kyle Alexander's athleticism to overcome Isaac Haas' size, an emphatic win for the Volunteers in that sense.
Purdue's a good team, though, a good team that had a bad day, a really bad day. That it almost won, and should have won, on a day it played about as bad as can be imagined reinforces the notion that Purdue is a good team.
It's just not going to have anymore chances to prove it out here. This loss blew the whole thing up. I don't want to say now that Atlantis is an unabashed wash, but in the context of what Purdue wanted it to be, it is. It's over.
Beating Western Kentucky — assuming it does — does nothing for you. Whoever would come next probably wouldn't do much more.
This isn't Maui 2014, where Purdue got beat by Kansas State, then beat Missouri and BYU to generate some real momentum.
That was the start of something; this is supposed to be the destination. Those were freshmen; now those freshmen are seniors, and there's no do-over on this.
While the loss itself might have been just a singular performance against a singular opponent, the sting of this loss could echo through the season.
This is Seed Season for Purdue.
And it's not off to a good start.
No one played particularly well for Purdue. No one.
It turned the ball over too much and gave up enough offensive rebounds to where it got to the point where you legitimately thought at times that its best bet to rebound would be to wait 'til Tennessee came down with the ball, then strip it.
Its offense, a surgical exercise to this point, was disrupted, Carsen Edwards never found the second-half ying to his first-half yang, Dakota Mathias turned the ball over, Isaac Haas got three rebounds in 24 minutes, Vincent Edwards shot 23 percent and with the game on the line, two seniors botched a defensive assignment, leading to the game being tied.
Ugly. As. Hell.
Above, I italicized the words "to this point," because it's phrase that if you take everything I write, paste it into a Word doc, then search those keywords, it'll freeze your computer, or melt it.
Because it's an important qualifier in college sports and especially basketball this time of year. Everything's fluid.
Should Purdue play bad in Game 5 with all these seniors after a summer's worth of meaningful experience? I think it's fair to say no, that it shouldn't.
But what happened today doesn't change much in terms of what Purdue is, unless this starts happening a bunch and then the term "soft" will start coming up.
But Purdue got it handed to it today, from toughness and effort perspectives. That was Tennessee's hope, to use its strength to best Purdue's skill in the frontcourt, to use Kyle Alexander's athleticism to overcome Isaac Haas' size, an emphatic win for the Volunteers in that sense.
Purdue's a good team, though, a good team that had a bad day, a really bad day. That it almost won, and should have won, on a day it played about as bad as can be imagined reinforces the notion that Purdue is a good team.
It's just not going to have anymore chances to prove it out here. This loss blew the whole thing up. I don't want to say now that Atlantis is an unabashed wash, but in the context of what Purdue wanted it to be, it is. It's over.
Beating Western Kentucky — assuming it does — does nothing for you. Whoever would come next probably wouldn't do much more.
This isn't Maui 2014, where Purdue got beat by Kansas State, then beat Missouri and BYU to generate some real momentum.
That was the start of something; this is supposed to be the destination. Those were freshmen; now those freshmen are seniors, and there's no do-over on this.
While the loss itself might have been just a singular performance against a singular opponent, the sting of this loss could echo through the season.
This is Seed Season for Purdue.
And it's not off to a good start.
