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Gold and Black Radio: IU Review, UCLA Preview

by:Derek Schultz•about 9 hours
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Gold and Black Radio


Host Derek Schultz and GoldandBlack.com men’s basketball expert Brian Neubert talk about Purdue’s four-game losing streak and the Boilermaker’s road back to winning games in the Feb. 25, 2025 edition. 

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ON PURDUE’S LOSING STREAK

Look, Purdue is a good team. It has too many good players who’ve won too many big games and as solid and reliable and solution-oriented a coach as you’ll find. It has shown enough at times this season to validate itself as a really good basketball team, but sometimes really good teams at any level of any sport have bad weeks or hit ruts.

That’s where Purdue seems to be right now. It may be a really good basketball team, but right now it is not a particularly composed, detailed or focused basketball team. That’s hard to explain beyond the general nature of young people performing in a highly scrutinized, highly pressurized environment.

Whatever the case may be, things have changed. The Big Ten title — not as big a deal as it used to be in this bastardized Big Ten, but still a really big deal — is out of the window, and Big Ten and NCAA postseason seeding implications come into play here, on top of questions of just how slippery this slope is, because UCLA can absolutely, positively come into Mackey Arena Friday and win. Purdue has to get right, but it had to get right after each of the three losses prior to the game at IU Sunday and the second-half slips continued.

In a normal season, a four-game losing streak — three of four on the road — wouldn’t be cause to call in the national guard. But the level to which Purdue has raised expectations both for itself and around it, the shock value that now comes with this stuff really is a good problem to have, I suppose.

Here’s what I know, though: There’s plenty of things to accomplish in the postseason now, and Purdue is now going to be viewed as something of an underdog, a role that this program has often been at its best in. The amazing thing about last season was how those guys handled the weight of the piano of expectations strapped to their backs all season long. This team had an opportunity heading to Michigan to win the Big Ten and maybe get a No. 1 or at least No. 2 seed, got a raw deal in that game and hasn’t been the same since.

These aren’t personnel problems. Purdue doesn’t have as perfect roster, but it didn’t in January, either.

These things can turn quick.

More: Upon Further Review: Indiana

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