WEST LAFAYETTE — Purdue basketball’s worst offensive performance of the season, courtesy of Iowa State’s defensive clinic, infected the other end of the floor as well.
The most damning statement after the Boilermakers’ 81-58 loss was not one of the characterizations of its magnitude. Matt Painter dropped several folksy descriptions of his team’s undoing, referencing “intestinal fortitude,” a “smorgasbord” of defensive lapses and a team taken “to the woodshed.”
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He also plainly said he did not believe his team could grind out a win against a team as good as the Cyclones. A year ago, that might have been an assessment of a team lacking necessary ingredients, such as advanced rebounding ability and rim protection on defense. Saturday, it was an assessment of his team’s mentality.
“You can’t play through your offense,” Painter said. “You’ve got to find your energy through defense. You’ve got to find your energy through rebounding and getting 50-50 balls and making those plays.
“… Their determination and their fight was better than ours.”
Shots did not fall in the first half, either, when Purdue shot 2 of 10 from 3-point range. Yet the early drought did not seem to have the same psychological effect on the team’s defensive initiative.
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Braden Smith served as the tip of that spear with a couple of steals. The Boilermakers scored 11 of their first 14 points off of turnovers — completely stealing Iowa State’s M.O.
Purdue trailed only 35-31 at halftime because, when home rims proved unkind, it fell back on its defense.
So why did that not happen in the second half, too? How did this become the most lopsided home loss for a No. 1 team in the history of the Associated Press Top 25 poll?
We’ll take a closer look at the stretch from when Iowa State star Joshua Jefferson picked up a third foul — 30 seconds into the second half — until he returned almost eight minutes later. When the advantage should have shifted to the Boilermakers, their opponent instead went on a 24-12 run.
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Purdue lost its nerve on defense and could not retrieve it
The defensive contrast between teams in the pivotal start of the second half was, at times, jarring.
Iowa State’s length and connectivity on the perimeter left Purdue guards dribbling for long stretches, looking in vain for a triggering action. Trey Kaufman-Renn went into halftime with a 1-for-8 shooting line — and finished the game with the same line. Many of his touches came on the perimeter, where he gave the ball up but rarely got it back.
On the first three Boiler possessions of this stretch, Fletcher Loyer missed a deep 3, Kaufman-Renn threw the ball away under the basket and Loyer was called for a travel. In some ways, those should have been the sort of turnovers Purdue could live with — dead ball results which allowed the defense to be set up anyway.
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After the thrown-away post look, point guard Tamin Lipsey brought the ball across midcourt and drove toward the lane. Every Purdue defender surged toward him, leaving Milan Momcilovic completely unattended in the corner. It was the easiest 3-pointer of the Cyclones’ 11-for-23 performance.
After the travel, some confusion between Oscar Cluff and Omer Mayer allowed Killyan Toure a clean look for another 3.
Other times, the Boilers seemed to suffer from a general lack of awareness against an opponent primed to capitalize. On the final play of this stretch, Dominick Nelson grabbed a defensive rebound in the lane, with only Kaufman-Renn behind him. He drove past every other player on the floor uninterrupted for a coast-to-coast layup and a 61-43 lead.
“I thought we kind of gave up some mental errors and some stuff away from our rules and got away, and they made us pay for it,” Smith said.
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Milan Momcilovic ran good at the worst possible time for Purdue
All of the above piling up left the Boilermakers vulnerable to worst-case possibilities on otherwise successful possessions.
Immediately after cutting the deficit back to 10, Purdue forced Iowa State late in the shot clock at the other end. Momcilovic had to hit a tough mid-range turnaround with two Boilers in his vicinity to beat the buzzer … and did.
Later in the surge he also hit a contested step-back jumper inside the arc.
The 2023 Wisconsin Mr. Basketball scored 20 or more points for the third straight game and fourth in his last five. To put his insane field goal percentage of 71.5% in perspective, typically uber-efficient Loyer is operating at a career-best 60.6% this season.
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Those low-percentage baskets may have felt like back-breakers in the moment. More accurately, they were gentle nudges on a structure already in the process of collapsing.
“I told our guys, I’m not mad when Milan shoots a fadeaway 18-footer in the corner and nails it,” Painter said. “I’m not mad about it. But you can’t give him a rhythm 3. You’ve got to make things difficult. You can’t give him angles.”
What Saturday’s loss said about Purdue’s championship potential
One question looms over this season and the pursuit of championship form in March. What is the best version of Purdue when it experiences the worst version of its shooting outcomes?
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Missing shots makes it more difficult to get back and set a defense. That wasn’t really the issue as the Cyclones widened the gap. They simply ran confident, sharp offense against a team which couldn’t right itself when it started to stumble.
Iowa State finished with a 17-13 edge in points off turnovers. That’s one category it expects to win every game. A mere four-point deficit might have been taken before the game as a predictive factor in Purdue’s favor. The most damning part of that statistic is that the Boilers generated only two points off a takeaway after the 11:19 mark of the first half.
They were on the attack early, until they weren’t. A team considered one of the most veteran and battled-tested in the country got turned inside-out on its home floor.
We need to keep citing this statistic for context of Purdue’s stated goals. None of the past 15 national champions finished the season with a KenPom adjusted defensive efficiency higher than 94. Only two finished with a rating higher than 92.
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The KenPom methodology gradually filters out previous season’s data, so some chunk of last year’s performance remains in the Boilers’ score of 97.9. That’s a drop from last season’s 99.2, but would still require them to be an outlier by championship standards.
Painter knows his team’s offense goes into each game with the possibility of burying an opponent. He hasn’t seen enough to know they can avoid being buried by an avalanche.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue basketball championship deficiencies exposed vs Iowa State
