Column: Purdue lives up to expectations

Maybe it was just drinking the Kool-aid, but it wasn’t hard to believe an upset was brewing Wednesday in Assembly Hall.

The ingredients were in place: several thousand exceptionally raucous students (including many that spent long hours outside to get good seats), one potential Purdue letdown after two huge wins and an IU team that most desperately needed a win.

But then reality set in: No. 8 Purdue is playing as well as any team in the country. IU isn’t.

And reality won: Purdue methodically put away the Hoosiers 72-61. It was IU’s fifth-straight loss and also its fifth-straight loss to the Boilermakers.

No matter how much a rivalry levels the playing field, a lot of leveling would have been needed to get this one even.

For the Hoosiers (12-16, 3-12), this team is struggling, especially on the defensive end. Defense was the focus of practice this week, and some of the same defensive issues came to fruition in the first half.

Purdue shot 61.5 percent from the field in the half, including 7-for-12 from the three-point line. Freshman Terone Johnson, who averages 27.1 percent from deep this season, hit three 3-pointers in the half.

It was 41-31 at half, and despite a mid-second-half run that twice cut the deficit to three points, IU never had enough to get over the hump.

For all intents, this loss wasn’t a shock. Purdue is playing for a top seed in the NCAA Tournament. IU is playing for a potential invitation to the College Basketball Invitational. (The what? Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of it before.)

But there were also disconcerting areas for the Hoosiers — parts of the game that have plagued this team for much of the season.

Basically, too many parts of IU’s bad side showed up to keep the team from pulling the upset.

There were mental mistakes. The referees called lots of fouls Wednesday, but sometimes the Hoosiers needed to deserve the whistle more.

A foul has to be a foul, and the touchy stuff down low bit the Hoosiers like it did last month when we started counting the number of and-1 baskets the Hoosiers allowed.
The Hoosiers also missed several hard-to-miss shots. IU coach Tom Crean said his team missed five shots from within one foot of the basket.

In the first half, Purdue’s All-American JaJuan Johnson picked up two fouls and went to the bench. But IU could not take advantage — the Boilermakers outscored the Hoosiers 13-6 while their scorer was on the bench.

Adding in the perimeter struggles in the first half, it appeared the IU players were one step behind with the game inside their head.

“We practice certain coverages all week, and we came out today, and some guys weren’t locked in,” junior guard Verdell Jones said. “It cost us a lot of buckets.”

Mental issues were Crean’s first comments from the podium after the game.

“We played very hard. They played very hard and very smart,” Crean said. “We didn’t always do that.”

There’s no denying that Purdue is the much better team right now. Play 100 games, Purdue wins 90.

But the upset was believable, and it just didn’t come together for IU.