Purdue hit rock bottom Thursday night. It doesn't get any worse than losing by 20 in front of a thousand people at Penn State.
At least it had better hope that was rock bottom for this season, because worse would be almost unfathomable.
In an indication of just how crazy Big Ten basketball can be and just how two-faced this Boilermaker team can be, Purdue got drilled at Penn State, getting handled from start to finish - save for a nice little early second-half run that was quickly turned irrelevant - by a bad team.
I know Penn State played a great game tonight and really took the fight to Purdue like a rebuilding program trying to set an identity should, but this one is on Purdue. It got blown out tonight by guys you’ve never heard of and may never hear from again.
But good for Penn State.
For Purdue, not so much.
It was bad on offense and defense, got out-hustled, out-coached and just out-everythinged. I usually don't buy into the whole 'trap game' theme, but coming off a big win Saturday, how else can you explain Purdue's effort at Penn State.
When its second-half run fizzled out, it lost whatever poise it had previously shown.
There was a glimmer of hope when Robbie Hummel scored seven straight and D.J. Byrd went beast mode and almost single-handedly dragged Purdue back into the game, but Terone Johnson was called for a charge and that just seemed to suck the life out of the Boilermakers.
At this stage of his career, quite frankly, Johnson has to have more savvy than that. This isn’t high school anymore. You can’t just barrel your way to the hoop and score.
Purdue was confounded by that 3-2 zone that confronted its shooters and demanded the Boilermakers to find some intermediary scoring on drives like the one Johnson turned it over on. Someone had to be able to hit a pull-up, runner or some such thing.
It got no so such scoring and on a night when its three-point shooting went south, it snowballed.
The Boilermakers were bad defensively - it’s probably over-simplifying things to say that you’d think they’d get to Billy Oliver after the first four of his seven threes - and bad on the boards against a good rebounding team, but one with no size and one against whom a better effort was needed.
Once the wheels came off, they really came off. Purdue lost its composure, committed bad, sloppy turnovers and fouls. When forced to turn up the pressure to unsound levels, Penn State piled on by beating it for layups.
After looking like Purdue again in that highly encouraging Illinois win, Purdue Thursday looked like whatever it looked like prior, only worse, in this highly discouraging loss.
The story of Purdue’s success of late has been the play of its bench.
At Penn State, aside from Byrd’s excellent second-half, that went south. The Johnsons and John Hart - congrats to Terone, though, for breaking that free throw slide - gave the Boilermakers little.
At the same time, Lewis Jackson was a non-factor, Ryne Smith wasn’t making shots and Jacob Lawson seemed to have his freshman bottom-out game.
It’s just that everything that could go wrong did.
Robbie Hummel showed flashes during that run. In games like this, Purdue needs its best player to do something about it, and he did with that run of seven straight points.
But it’s confounding how something like Thursday night could happen to a team from a program that prides itself on playing smart basketball and playing with toughness, with the leadership it has both from the sideline and on the court.
But it is what it is now. This is a flawed, hurt team that’s been inconsistent and at this stage of the season, clearly will continue to be. Its long-term ceiling this season is limited. The turning point that the Illinois game seemed to be apparently just wasn’t.
That said, you always have to take a breath. Perspective is important.
The consistency this program’s displayed in past years is more a credit to those teams than the lack thereof is an indictment of this particular one. That was the standard set, but not one every team to follow can live up to.
These ups and downs are not exclusive to Purdue.
Tonight alone, Big East power Pitt lost to Big East doormat DePaul. Villanova lost to South Florida, which apparently has a basketball program, according to multiple published reports.
It happens.
Thursday was a disaster for Purdue in every basketball-related sense of the term. Now, though, Purdue just has to make this is rock bottom, but things can get worse if it allows them to.
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This post was edited on 1/5 11:18 PM by Brian_GoldandBlack.com
