The Boilers were not on the top of their game on Tuesday night's loss to Duke 76-60. Purdue came out flat and it seemed to stay like that the rest of the night. We were never able to get a good run going that would give us the momentum to get back into the game. Purdue was never able to take the lead or fight back from Duke's 7-0 point run at the start of the game.
Duke's plan coming into the game was to shut down sophomores E'Twaun Moore and Robbie Hummel. The Blue Devils were able to do this without much trouble. Hummel seemed to disappear on the court since he never got an open look at the basket and was held to shoot only 50 percent from the field and only allowed one 3-pointer on several attempts which was when Purdue was shooting 3-pointers desperately towards to end of the game to get something going. E'Twaun Moore was completely shut down in the 1st half and didn't score until the 2nd half, but he did manage to come away with 10 points, only shooting 5 of 12 from the field and scoreless from beyond the arch. The Boilers had to look to other players to step up and make plays.
Purdue looked to their big men down low, Johnson and Calasan, to step up and play big. These two seemed to have the best chance of scoring since Duke was focusing on stopping our perimeter shooting. Johnson and Calason both had relatively good games compared to the rest of the team. They were able to get down low and play physical, get rebounds, and draw fouls while getting shots off. Unfortunately, 2 big men were not able to pull out a win for the Boilers.
The Duke game is one that we Boilers wish we could forget about. It was not a pretty game. Duke and Purdue was, what I believe, the biggest game of the year for the Boilers. There is no better rival than Duke. I am excluding Indiana since they are having a bad year coming off of the coaching incident last year. There is no doubt that Purdue will be able to bounce back from having two losses in a row. They are a good enough team that this will not get inside their heads. I am predicting a blow out this Saturday when we play Arkansas-PB.
1 comment:
Wow! This was another heartbreaker for Purdue! Two tough losses in a row! I don't think Purdue played to their full potential and was a bit nervous in the get go! It was a tough life and hopefully they can bounce back from it. Moore needs to get more involved in the first half! It's just hard to win games when your top scorer doesn't even score in the first half! Hopefully we'll do better the rest of the season!
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