Houston 62 – Purdue 60 – Heartbreak in Indianapolis

Hell of a season.

Pressure makes diamonds. Big players make big plays. Purdue had two players step up and make big plays on the offensive end in the first half. Neither of which was who you would have expected coming into this game. Purdue is more than just Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Renn, but we all know that they are Purdue’s two best players. So naturally, if you’re the opposing team you want to slow the two of them down. Houston was able to (mostly) do that in the first half as the two combined to go 4-12 and score 12 points. Meanwhile, the third man in Purdue’s Big Three, Fletcher Loyer, did everything Purdue fans have clamored for him to do. He went 4-6 from the floor including 2-3 from deep and 2-3 at the free throw line for a total of 12 points of his own. The other hero of the first half was true freshman CJ Cox who had 7 points on 2-3 shooting including a timely three.

Now, that’s not to say that Braden Smith didn’t have an impactful first half. He had four assists and more importantly played great defense on Houston’s star LJ Cryer who finished the first half with 0 points on 0-6 shooting. Purdue weathered the storm of a 6-0 Houston run in the final two minutes before coming back with a 5-0 run of their own, including two Braden Smith free throws with just .3 remaining in the first half to go into halftime up 31-29. Just 20 more minutes of game time separated Purdue from a return meeting with Tennessee in the Elite Eight.

John Wooden Memorial Player of the Game (JWMPOTG) – Camden Heide earns this one just for his game tying shot. What an amazing play. It’s unfortunate that Purdue wouldn’t pull off the victory as this shot would go down in Purdue lore forever. As it stands, it was an amazing moment.

Purdue has had a notorious problem with closing halves and starting second halves. They solved the first one with that 5-0 run to end the half. However, the start of the second half could hardly have gone worse. The Purdue lead was always precarious as Houston had missed a number of open looks from three in that first half, but Purdue kept finding a way to punch back. To start the second half, Purdue allowed an 11-1 run to go from up two at half to down 8. It wasn’t until a Camden Heide three that Purdue made their first field goal but by then the story was already written. Purdue just wouldn’t have enough in the tank to compete with the number 1 defense in the country for 40 minutes. That’s not a black mark on this Purdue team, it was always going to be tough. However, you can’t win a game like this by scoring just 15 points over the first 12:05 of the second half. It was always going to be a low scoring game, but 15 points in more than a half was not going to be enough to do it.

You have to give this Purdue team credit for clawing and fighting their way back. After being down 10 Purdue found a way to go on a 9-1 run to bring themselves back within two at 57-55. Purdue saw scoring not from Braden Smith and TKR but from Myles Colvin, Loyer, and Camden Heide. The Purdue crowd came back to life and the team was feeding off of them. However, then a series of bad calls went against the Boilermakers. By my count is was four straight calls that went against the Boilermakers including two out of bounds calls and two foul calls. There’s a great line in Arrested Development when Tobias says, “I don’t want to blame it on all 9/11, but it certainly didn’t help.” Right now I feel like Tobias, I don’t want to blame it all on this series of bad calls, but it certainly didn’t help. Despite this though, Purdue again dug back in and got multiple defensive stops in a row to find themselves down three points with the ball. With the shot clock dwindling down, Camden Heide was stationed in the corner and Braden Smith found him for one of his 15 assists in this game. With just under 1 second to go on the shot clock Heide let it fly from the corner and drained it. Tie ballgame. Houston had the ball with a chance to take the lead but couldn’t convert, unfortunately, the officials decided that a push off and arm extension on Houston wasn’t enough for the offensive foul and despite missing the shot, Houston was able to get the ball back with just over 2 seconds to go.

A miscommunication of some type on the inbounds resulted in Houston getting a wide open layup with less than a second to go. It was over.

it was a heartbreaking way to end the season. This team fought against the top ranked defense, and the 11th best offense, and took them to the wire. I know we wanted more, the team wanted more, and the coaching staff wanted more, but there’s nothing this team should hang their heads about. This was a titanic struggle and every Purdue Boilermaker should hold their heads high today. We wanted a return to the Elite Eight, but it wasn’t to be. Now, unfortunately, the focus turns to the offseason where Purdue will look to do everything they can to focus on making the team better for the senior year of Loyer, Smith, and TKR.