Purdue can still blunt-force trauma its way to wins, but Boilers beat Wisconsin surgically
The play that shows what this Purdue team has become — and what this 2023-24 Purdue basketball team still can be — happened in the second half of the No. 2 Boilermakers’ 75-69 victory Sunday at No. 6 Wisconsin. It looked weird, kind of like this game. Looked bad, unless you were really paying attention, which is what these Boilermakers are requiring of us, now. They can blunt-force trauma their way past teams, but they also can do it surgically, subtly, which brings us back to the play you need to see.
A play you probably missed in real time. Just a guess.
Second half, about 6½ minutes left. Purdue is leading 57-53 when sophomore point guard Braden Smith, who has catapulted past All-Big Ten potential to All-American potential, has the ball. Center Zach Edey, closing in on his second consecutive unanimous national Player of the Year award, comes out to the foul line to set a screen. The pick-and-roll, you call this play, and it’s Purdue’s favorite. It’s an NBA play, but that’s fine — because these are two NBA players.
Yes, they are. Don’t interrupt.
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Smith rolls off the screen and heads down the left side of the lane. Edey slips unnoticed toward the basket, or at least as unnoticed as a 7-4, 300-pound, national player of the year can be. Smith has the ball and he’s moving fast, too fast. The Wisconsin defense is double-teaming Smith as he’s heading toward the baseline and rising for what would be an impossible layup from an impossible angle.
Now, we’ve seen Smith hit shots like this before, and it’s no fluke. What, you think he won the 2022 IndyStar Mr. Basketball award without all kinds of skill? Stop it. Smith can hit fast-moving shots from tough angles, but this one isn’t going to happen. He’s moving too fast. The angle is too tough.
So here’s what Braden Smith does next:
He throws it off the backboard, high above the rim, where only someone who stands 7-4 can get it. And what do you know? Zach Edey is there, and he’s rising for the pass and dunking it, and before you interrupt me again, let me just say this:
Yes, that was a pass.
This is all the rage in basketball, passes off the backboard. It’s happening in the NBA regularly, though generally it’s a player passing it to himself for a dunk. Now, other than the occasional two-on-none fastbreak where one guy throws a pass off the glass for a teammate to dunk, I’ve never seen a player do it against actual defenders.
But that’s what Smith did, and that’s the play that shows what this Purdue team has become — what this Purdue team still can be — because it shows how much Purdue is evolving. The Boilermakers remain a team that can blunt-force trauma you by 30 points, but now they’ve become a real nightmare:
Purdue is now adjusting on the fly, like Braden Smith from an impossible angle, a skill that will carry them deep into March and perhaps early April.
Fletcher Loyer, Braden Smith, Lance Jones pick up slack for Zach Edey
It’s not just that Smith-to-Edey dunk, OK? Yes, the internet is full of creeps trying to turn one little fact into some full-blown trend. You’ve seen those people. Unintelligent at worst, unethical at best.
That’s not me WELL IT’S NOT and anyway, don’t interrupt. Please.
Here’s what you need to know about this box score from Purdue 75, Wisconsin 69: It doesn’t add up. Doesn’t make sense that Purdue won.
Purdue made just three 3-pointers all game. That’s not good. Edey scored just 18 points, and wasn’t efficient about it — going 7-for-13 from the floor, and 4-for-8 at the line. Purdue had more than twice as many turnovers (11) as Wisconsin (five), and finally, this game was played on the road. Not just a neutral site, but a full-blown hostile environment, with those delightful young lads from Wisconsin trying to help the 7-4 Edey from banging his head on doorways by chanting, “Duck Zach Edey!”
Well, maybe that first word wasn’t “Duck.”
Same crowd, same kids, were chanting to their non-student fans: “Stand up old people!” Future leaders of America there in Madison.
Purdue has been the dominant program not just in the Big Ten, but the country, over the past three or four seasons. But even with all that winning, all those No. 1 rankings and No. 1 seeds, any idea when Purdue last beat a Top-10 team on the road?
Almost 14 years ago: March 1, 2010, at Ohio State.
This is a different Purdue team, though, one equipped to handle hostility — the NCAA tournament will get that way eventually, if the Boilers keep advancing — and adversity. The adversity Sunday came from the gameplan of terrific Wisconsin coach Greg Gard, who found a way to limit Edey near the rim while also taking away Purdue’s open looks from 3-point range. How did he do both? No idea, but he did.
So here’s what the Boilermakers did: They adjusted on the fly. Fletcher Loyer, who came into this game on a long-range heater from 3-point range — 27-for-55 in the past 12 games (49.1%) — didn’t get a single good look from behind the arc. The Wisconsin defense was closing out too fast, so here’s what Loyer did: He forced a bunch of lousy shots NO HE DID NOT.
Loyer took exactly zero 3-pointers, the first time he’s done that in 58 career games. Instead he took what the defense was giving him, blowing past his defender for two floaters and a pull-up from 17 feet. Loyer also attacked the rim so much that he earned seven free throws — the fourth-highest total of his career — and made six. Loyer scored 12 points without a single 3-pointer.
Wasn’t just him making adjustments, either.
Lance Jones, Cam Heide are different athletes
Braden Smith is shooting 42.7% from 3-point range, with five or more 3-point attempts becoming the norm in recent weeks. But he ran into the same issues as Loyer at Wisconsin, a defense that wasn’t letting him shoot from behind the arc, so here’s what that rascal did:
Beat them with mid-range jumpers.
Smith missed his first shot of the game, a 17-footer, then hit his next five. Four were mid-range jumpers, and the fifth was a driving bucket where he was slammed to the ground and made his shot anyway and then took the opportunity, as he was lying on his back, to flex his arms and shout: “And onnnnnnnnnnne!”
Smith scored 19 points without making a single 3-pointer. He tried just one, but got to the line five times and made all five.
Lance Jones hit all three of Purdue’s 3-pointers and scored a team-high 20 points. Smith was next with 19. Edey had 18. Let’s look at that another way:
Purdue was 3-for-11 from 3-point range, and Zach Edey was the team’s third-leading scorer, and Purdue still beat No. 6 Wisconsin on the road — and led for the final 30 minutes.
The Boilermakers did it with opportunistic offense and another reason this is a different Purdue team than recent years: elite athletic ability on the perimeter. Painter added two world-class athletes to the rotation this season — Jones, a 6-1 Southern Illinois transfer, and 6-7, 205-pound redshirt freshmen Camden Heide — and those two did a number on Wisconsin’s two most disruptive perimeter players, 6-6 wing A.J. Storr and 6-2 point guard Chucky Hepburn.
Storr, a St. John’s transfer who came into the game averaging 16.5 points on 45% shooting from the floor, managed 14 but was so ineffective — 4-for-15 overall, 0-for-4 on 3-pointers — that Gard removed him from the game with three minutes left. The Badgers’ leading scorer was benched after going 1-for-8 in 13 second-half minutes. Most of that was against Jones, though Heide defended Storr when Jones was resting.
Both Purdue players took turns on Hepburn as well. And Hepburn, an honorable mention All-Big Ten pick last season who averaged 15 points in his past two games against Purdue, scored six points on 1-for-6 shooting. The math works: Storr and Hepburn, defended by a different caliber of athlete than Purdue has had in recent years, were a combined 5-for-21.
It’s a different Purdue team, I’m telling you, but you’ve got to pay attention. And do it better than the official scorer at Wisconsin, who missed the brilliance of Braden Smith and credited him with a missed shot — not an assist — on that alley oop to Edey.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue's win at Wisconsin shows growth of team ready for NCAA run
