On Dec. 24, Tiara Murphy sat in her South Bend home and cried.
In that moment, the day before Christmas, all her frustrations came to a boiling point. She couldn’t play with her teammates after having surgery two days earlier for a torn ACL a couple weeks before. She was stricken to her bed during the holidays. She was unable to head out to see old friends, as is her usual custom during school breaks.
“I couldn’t do things,” Murphy said Monday afternoon. “I felt like I was letting my team down because physically I couldn’t do everything they were doing. (But) they continued to stay behind me. … That’s the best part about it, that I had people pushing me.”
Murphy, a sophomore guard, had all those emotions again flowing Friday night, when she came off the bench to spur the Boilermakers to a comeback victory in the opener at Central Michigan. Purdue, which plays its home opener vs. Miami (Ohio) on Wednesday, trailed by 16 early in the second half, only to rally for a 10-point win.
And Murphy was a big reason why. The reserve came off the bench to score a career-high 19 points, hitting six of her nine three-point attempts in 27 minutes.
“She just got us organized,” Coach Sharon Versyp said. “She made a play. We needed someone to make a play. It’s fun to watch her, because that’s what we know she’s capable of doing. I don’t know about five or six threes every game, but she’s capable of having that little edge, that little swag to get people going. She did. She ran the point well.”
Murphy ran the point all 20 minutes of the second half, an impressive feat considering she's coming back from significant injury. It was only nine games into last season when Murphy’s right knee buckled as she raced down the floor. The injury knocked her out for the season, the only saving grace being that she was just under the cutoff for a medical redshirt.
She tried to go into rehab with a positive attitude, and did for a moment, but the reality of surgery quickly hit.
“I didn’t think I was going to make it though because of what I was going through,” she said. “But I just try to take it day-by-day. I know I’m not completely there physically and mentally, as I was before, but I’m going to continue to work on it. But that gives me a boost, knowing that I’m able to do this now to build my confidence even higher than it was before.”
Murphy doesn’t yet feel 100 percent. She says her speed isn’t where it was before the injury, the first step a bit slower, but she’s continuing to try to get stronger.
Friday night, she felt good, noticing in warmups that she was knocking down shots. That doesn’t always carry over, but it did against the Chippewas.
“When I (first) got out there, I shot a three and I thought I was going to get taken out (for shooting so quickly), but (Versyp) had enough confidence in me to keep me in there,” Murphy said. “I started knocking them down and couldn’t miss.”
Notes
• Purdue wants a quicker start on Wednesday vs. Miami.
The Boilermakers scored only 26 points on 33-percent shooting in the first half against CMU.
“Just settling down,” Versyp said. “Our first game is over. It was very loud in there, nobody could hear. We tried to prepare with loud noise, but until you’re in it — and we have 10 freshmen and sophomores and one senior — hopefully we got those jitters out.”
But it’s not only nerves. Purdue needs to rebound, too. The Boilermakers were beaten 40-26 on the glass, including giving up 19 offensive rebounds that equaled 18 points.
“The biggest thing is the offensive boards, and we’re a little undersized, so we have to make contact, push them back,” she said. “We have to be better with the physicality.”
• Karissa McLaughlin was named Big Ten co-Freshman-of-the-Week after she scored 21 points with five assists and four steals vs. CMU. She got off to a bit of a slow start, before scoring 15 in the second half.
“She obviously did some good things for us,” Versyp said. “She’ll probably give credit to the team, as I will. She was in great positions, we delivered the ball, she shot the ball well, she was able to read some things. It’s great to have a debut like that but doesn’t mean it’s always going to be like that.”
• Purdue is targeting the Utah game on Monday for the return of Nora Kiesler, who has been out with a head injury.
