BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - There's no shame to losing at Indiana anymore.
Hell, this college basketball season, it's kind of become the cool thing to do.
But what was maddening for Purdue about its 85-74 loss to the 18th-ranked Hoosiers in Assembly Hall - aside from the fact that it was a setback to its hated rival - was that the Boilermakers didn't do all the things that had made them one of the hottest teams out there of late.
In winning five of its prior six games, Purdue had been getting off to good starts to games. That was a process, a real problem for the Boilermakers early in the season and subject to constant lineup tinkering on Matt Painter's part.
But whether it was IU shooting Purdue out of a good start or Purdue allowing IU to shoot it out of a good start, there was no good start this time.
The Boilermakers rushed some shots. Either D.J. Byrd was affected by the crowd's taunts, was too eager to try to shut them up or simply had that rare bad shooting game, but the junior, who's been so brilliant this Big Ten season, went 2-for-10 from deep about an hour after I submitted my All-Big Ten ballot with him on it. Not that one game changes anything, but that was one spot I put a lot of thought into, so maybe I was the jinx.
Purdue turned the ball over, 10 times - which is a lot by Boilermaker standards - and they were impactful turnovers, many of them leading to points.
And the Boilermakers didn't play smart or disciplined on defense. When they had a chance at the end, fouls away from the basket gave IU free, unearned points. That looked like Purdue of two months ago.
But what Purdue didn't do isn't the whole story.
Indiana is good. At home, it's been damn near invincible. For a reason.
After IU won in Mackey, it was written here that the Hoosiers enjoyed a significant talent advantage, as well as marked advantages in their overall height, length and athleticism.
Those things didn't change overnight.
Cody Zeller's not a great shot-blocker, but his presence, along with that of 6-foot-9 Christian Watford and long, athletic swingmen Will Sheehey and Victor Oladipo just change things for Purdue, making it very difficult for Purdue around the basket.
You saw that again tonight: When Boilermaker penetrators got close, they sometimes wound up just throwing the ball at the basket. In West Lafayette, Sheehey's block of Lewis Jackson after Purdue got within just a couple points in the final minutes changed the game.
Tonight, in the second half, all of a sudden, Indiana started playing volleyball with Purdue's shots.
Zeller has changed Indiana, but so too have the strides made by Oladipo and Sheehey and the fact Watford's apparently buying in. He was an impossible matchup for Purdue tonight. In the first half alone, he made a three, scored on post-ups, faced up and drove on Byrd and finished layups cutting to the rim.
And so IU has its two-game sweep of Purdue and I'm sure you'll hear all about Indiana reclaiming the state and all that.
Well, we'll see, but as I wrote after the last game, this season's series was played between two teams who were the proverbial ships passing in the night.
For Purdue this has been a rebuilding season (next year will be, too); for IU this was a season it's been building toward.
Comparing these two programs moving forward, it's going to be a question for Purdue of whether it can build it back up and for IU, a question of whether it can stay there now that it's gotten to where it is.
What's clear is that things have obviously evened out, at the very least, and there should be some very good games in the future.
This isn't the early years of this century when Purdue was awful or the past three years when Indiana was awful.
Both programs are back on solid ground and that's how, in a perfect world, it should be.
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