Purdue basketball is a broken team right now.
It felt like something wasn’t riht in closer-than-expected wins over Washington, Penn State, and Iowa at home, but exactly one week ago from when I am writing this the Boilermakers were leading in the second half at UCLA, looking to stay in first place at 8-0.
Now it has lost three games in a row.
Yes, the Big Ten is tough. Yes, this was an always hard rivalry game. Yes, the margins are close.
It is still frustrating because of those close margins when you know this team is capable of so much more. We have seen what this team can be on both ends of the floor. We have had that moments of beautiful basketball, but since the last two minutes of the UCLA game everything has been a struggle on both ends. Purdue cannot defend thethree-point arc, it is struggling to rebound, and the offense has no flow to it. Fletcher Loyer continues to struggle to shoot and Trey Kaufman-Renn is being kept off the glass.
It’s a mess, and there are no easy answers.
There are now 10 games left in a season where every expectation was another Big Ten title and a trip to Indianapolis for maybe the first National Championship in school history. Is the Big Ten lost now? Not for certain, especially with games left against Michigan, Michigan State, and Nebraska, but something has to change drastically because Purdue has not been itself for about four weeks now, and it is threatening to derail everything it has been building for.
I am not going to panic yet, but the next two games against teams that reside at the bottom of the league present a golden chance to get things right.
Fletcher Loyer, Trey Kaufman-Renn, and Braden Smith
Matt Painter
