The in-state rivalry between Indiana and Purdue basketball is always a heated battle, and Sunday was no different. After Purdue played a great first half to take a 12-point lead into the locker room, the Hoosiers responded with one of their best halves of the season to run away with a 73-58 victory over the 13th-ranked Boilermakers.
Indiana crushed Purdue in the final 20 minutes, outscoring its rivals 48-21 to save its season and remain right in the center of the bubble mix. Now, Indiana has a clear path into the NCAA Tournament field after seeming far, far away just weeks ago.
On the Purdue side, this is the fourth loss in a row for Matt Painter and company, and the second half is the main culprit in all four of those games. After the loss in Bloomington, Painter didn’t hold back about his team’s meltdown after halftime.
“We put ourselves in great position just to let it squander away,” Painter said, per Baird. “To say we lost our composure is an understatement.”
Purdue had a halftime lead in three of the last four games, but was outscored in the second half in each one as Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana all came back to win. In the fourth game on this losing streak, Purdue trailed Michigan State by just two in East Lansing before the Spartans pulled away late in a nine-point victory.
While none of these losses would be considered bad losses — all four of them are Quad 1 games — the volume of losses is starting to take its toll on Purdue’s projected NCAA Tournament seeding. Painter’s club has been projected as a No. 3 or No. 4 seed for much of the season, even sneaking up to a No. 2 at times. Now, however, the Boilermakers are more in the four-to-five range as the season starts to slip away from them.
Thankfully for this Purdue basketball team, its schedule lightens up a bit now for the last three games of the season. It will host UCLA and Rutgers before closing the season with a trip to Illinois before the Big Ten Tournament. There’s still plenty of time for Purdue to rebound from this slump, but it must fix these second half issues in order to do so.
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