Hoosiers suffer blowout loss at Purdue

WEST LAFAYETTE – One of the most tumultuous weeks in recent IU men’s basketball memory was put to rest Saturday, as the Purdue Boilermakers (15-10, 5-7) pummeled the Hoosiers (14-11, 4-8) 82-64 in front of an impassioned Mackey Arena crowd.

The troubled week began Wednesday, when the Hoosiers saw a 13-point second half lead squandered in the final moments against Penn State.

Then, Friday morning, sophomore forward Hanner Mosquera-Perea was arrested on an OWI charge.

Friday night, less than 24 hours before the team played its biggest rival, IU Coach Tom Crean announced via Twitter Mosquera-Perea would not travel with the team and would be suspended indefinitely.

This was all just a precursor to what was about to play out in West Lafayette.

Purdue – which had lost four straight games to the Hoosiers, including a 97-60 romp at home on Jan. 30, 2013 – went on a 22-4 run that spanned the final minutes of the first half and continued well into the second.

After the game, sophomore forward Austin Etherington said he felt his team didn’t return the punch Purdue dealt the Hoosiers coming out of halftime.

“The first half we fought pretty hard, and we thought we were right there,” Etherington said. “Then they went on the run to start the second half, and we didn’t take the hit — we didn’t fight back like we should have, and it got to where it was.”

The Hoosiers were careless with the ball early on, committing seven turnovers during the game’s first seven minutes. To pile on to its stack of self-inflicted miscues, Crean said he and his staff counted Hoosier players missed 12 layups.

Sophomore guard Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell said afterward his team’s missed layups were maddening.

“It was very frustrating,” Ferrell said. “We just weren’t focusing on those layups, layups that we would normally make. At the end of the day, we should have made those easy layups at the rim.”

Purdue shot well above its season averages Saturday, going 25-of-52 from the field and 10-of-18 from beyond the arc. During the second half, when the Boilermakers scored 44 points, Purdue shot 57.1 percent from the floor (12-of-21).

Crean acknowledged Purdue’s hot shooting in his press conference, but time and time again the Boilermakers found one another for open shots.

Senior guard Sterling Carter scored a team-high 19 points, going 5-of-6 from 3-point range.

Freshman forward Noah Vonleh scored the game’s first points, a 3-pointer in the face of Purdue’s A.J. Hammons. Vonleh outscored Hammons 14 points to five, yet both big men were forced to sit out periods of time due to foul trouble.

On its next possession, senior wing Will Sheehey connected on a corner 3-pointer, which vaulted him into IU’s 1,000 point club. Sheehey finished with 10 points on 3-of-8 shooting, and he now has 1,009 career points in an IU uniform.

Besides Sheehey’s accomplishment, not much else went right for the Hoosiers.

From the two minutes and 33 second mark in the first half until the 13 minutes and four second mark in the second half, the Hoosiers were held without a field goal. Once the Hoosiers finally scored a basket, they found themselves down by 15 points.

In Mosquera-Perea’s absence, freshman forward Devin Davis played 12 minutes, scoring two points and pulling in four rebounds.

Davis had to match up with players several inches taller than him on defense. With Mosquera-Perea suspended indefinitely, this will most likely be a nightly occurrence for the freshman.

Ferrell, who had a game-high 27 points on 6-of-17 shooting, said after the game he felt most of IU’s problems were mental mistakes.

“I feel like it’s mostly mental,” Ferrell said. “Especially when teams make that run, guys kinda get quiet on the court.

“You know those are times when you’ve got to come together at our greatest moment ... when team’s make runs like that, we’ve just got to have that more of an edge to come back.”

While Purdue coasted to an easy victory – it led by double digits for all of the game’s final 17 minutes and 10 seconds – its fans continued with their vitriol towards IU.
The crowd stayed for the game’s entirety, soaking in Purdue’s first win against the Hoosiers since Feb. 23, 2011.

During his postgame press conference, Crean said his team needs to gain confidence from one another in the midst of its three-game conference losing streak, its longest since the 2011-12 season.

“The bottom line is, you get your strength from your teammates,” Crean said. “You gotta shut out the negativities and the doubts as much as you can, and then you can’t let them creep in when the game’s going on.

“We’ve gotta get more strength and confidence from our teammates on the floor.”