Well that was a thing that happened - Purdue Steals Win at Northwestern

It’s tough, watching this team play. Watching this team play on the road no less. They can’t finish at the rim, they can’t hit from distance, everything is slow and kinda sucky and I just sit there on the couch, watching this team slough its way to disappointing appearance after disappointing appearance on the road. But Northwestern, right? That’ll cure what ailes this team. Right?

Well not exactly. Purdue stuck to the script early on, getting off to a slow start, letting inferior players get into a rhythm. Go down by eight, claw back and go down by eight again…you could set your clock by how bad this team plays outside of Mackey.

Maybe that’s the enduring lesson of this season? We all know how special of a place Mackey is; visiting announcers and coaches laud its environment, its volume, that crushing feeling when Purdue puts a couple possessions on you and you feel the weight of the fans breathing on your neck. When you’re a Purdue fan - and I would assume, a Purdue player - that weight feels more like a warm hug. You feel part of a super organism, everyone breathing in sync, screaming in sync, covering the court as a singular unit, squeezing the life out of its interlopers.

According to KenPom, the average home court advantage (in terms of points) is 3.3 (as of 2018). What must that number be for Purdue this season? Enough to beat the defending champs by 29? One of this year’s contenders by the same spread?

But as crushing as this team is at home, they are equal in magnitude in the opposite direction on the road. That inability to transition some ability to the road is what has doomed this team this year; it’s what made a NCAA Tournament bid appear to be a fantasy.

But in four gorgeous minutes, you might have mistaken Evanston for West Lafayette, as a game’s worth of frustrations, no, a season’s worth of road woes finally broke through. This team started firing in sync; pairing excellent, active defense, with energetic offense (and some made shots thrown in for good measure!) and the script on this game flipped entirely. By the time Sasha Stefanovic hit a 25-foot game winner, an eight point deficit had turned to a 3-point win and if Purdue has any sense they’d get the hell out of town as fast as possible lest Northwestern challenge the outcome under the auspices of something so ridiculous couldn’t have come by honestly.

(Which, by the way, should be a lesson to Chris Collins and Northwestern. You’re up five with two minutes remaining; what the **** are you doing trying to run the clock out?!? Play the game you fools! That is just awful, awful coaching. If Painter did that I’d want his head checked and his February paycheck docked.)

So Purdue avoids a .500 record, moves closer to even in the conference, and keeps some tiny glimmer of a postseason hope alive. Burn the tape, act like this never happened, and get home safely. Next week, which features a top-20 Iowa and arch rival Indiana portends to be less forgiving that this abomination of a Wildcat squad. We’ll see if Purdue can meet the challenge.