Illinois had cut an early 16-point deficit by more than half. Defending National Player of the Year Zach Edey had just picked up his second foul. Purdue, for perhaps the first time at Mackey Arena this season, had been staggered, at least slightly, with a little more than eight minutes to go in the first half of a huge top-10 showdown with the Illini.
What transpired over the next eight minutes and change was proof of why this year’s Purdue team is different… and why the Boilermakers feel like a lock to run away with the Big Ten championship.
The traditional line of thinking amongst the many coaches that have faced Purdue since Edey emerged as college basketball’s most dominant force has been that perhaps your only chance of beating the Boilermakers is hammering Purdue when Edey is on the bench. Illinois received a golden chance to do just that Friday night. Instead, the Illini were outscored by eight in the final eight minutes of the first half. That gave Purdue a 15-point halftime lead, one that set the tone for a cruise-control second half that saw the lead balloon up to as much as 21 before being trimmed drastically in the final minutes.
“They kicked our butt in that stretch,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said after his team’s 83–78 loss. “The best player in the country’s not in the game, you better make hay.”
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Instead, score yet another win for Purdue’s much-maligned group of “role players” around Edey, who proved again that this Boilermaker unit is more than just its 7’ 4” superstar.
“When you play Zach [Edey], you can’t [play] normal. You have to try to make other players beat you,” Underwood said. “There’s a lot of risk with that, and we saw that tonight.”
We’ve seen Braden Smith emerge into one of the best point guards in college basketball, with monster showings against Alabama and Arizona. Fletcher Loyer exploded for 27 in Hawaii against Tennessee. A big second half from Lance Jones led the Boilermakers past Gonzaga in that same tournament. Tonight’s non-Edey hero was forward Trey Kaufman-Renn, who played what could easily be considered his best game in a Purdue uniform. He tallied 23 points on the game, keeping the offense humming with Edey sidelined late in the first half. He even drilled an uncharacteristic dagger three in the second half as Illinois tried to cut into the deficit that had Underwood keeled over in frustration on the sidelines. It was a breakthrough performance for a player Matt Painter has often lauded, but hasn’t regularly gotten the chance to shine given Edey’s presence in the middle.
“The way he played tonight, that’s the way he played the whole summer,” Painter said. “You don’t see it as much because he doesn’t play heavy minutes all the time… but I thought he was fabulous tonight.”
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All this to say: Purdue has far more ways to beat you than it had a year ago and with its teams from before. The Boilermakers can run sets and break you down with elite execution, or just flow into ball screens with Smith and Edey playing the sport’s most dangerous two-man game. Edey’s 10 points Friday were his lowest output in two seasons, but even largely neutralizing him isn’t enough anymore. The Boilermakers around him keep emerging, more confident than ever to step into the spotlight when needed.
“I think Braden Smith is one of the most improved players I’ve seen, not just in the Big Ten… he’s not afraid anymore,” Underwood said. “I’ve always thought Gillis is a stud… they’ve got depth, Trey’s a matchup problem… they don’t have those big, physical wings, but boy, you’ve got two big, physical frontcourt guys that make it really tough.”
One Big Ten staffer opined to Sports Illustrated this week that Purdue is the best team the league has seen in at least five years, and Friday night’s performance did little to invalidate that opinion. Illinois’ No. 9 ranking in the AP Poll comes with an asterisk with star wing Terrence Shannon Jr. suspended indefinitely, but the Illini did little to cause concern about their long-term status in their 30-point drubbing of Northwestern without Shannon earlier this week. And to their credit, the Illini battled back admirably after digging themselves the massive hole on Friday.
But it was hard to watch this Purdue performance and not feel like the Boilermakers winning a second straight Big Ten title is something of an inevitability. And once that falls into place, a second straight No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament (and potentially even the overall No. 1 spot) should be clearly in Purdue’s sights.
