Takeaways, Wrap Video: Purdue's win over Northwestern
Our post-game analysis following 20th-ranked Purdue’s 79-61 win over Northwestern Jan. 5 in Mackey Arena.
PDF: Purdue-Northwestern stats
ON PURDUE DEFENSE
Prior to today, Purdue had quietly been trending pretty well defensively, doing a nice job against Toledo and Minnesota, but those teams aren’t very good.
Sunday, the Boilermakers were louder about their collective defensive emergence, eliminating two of the Big Ten’s top three scorers almost entirely and winning this game practically before it had even begun.
This is not a particularly physically gifted Purdue team from a defensive perspective, but Matt Painter and Paul Lusk armed it with a great plan on Sunday and the Boilermakers this season have rarely looked as active, as detail-minded and as connected on defense as they did to start this game, jumping out to a 20-8 lead in a game where you figured every point would really matter.
The takeaway: Purdue is paying attention on defense, trying hard, playing with chemistry and capable of being OK on defense if all those things keep up, and it keeps up the effort on the glass.
Northwestern had size advantages all over the place Sunday, but got outrebounded by five and allowed 13 second-chance points.
Four of Purdue’s five starters grabbed six or more rebounds, led by CJ Cox — CJ Cox — with eight.
BRADEN SMITH RISING TO BIG TEN TITLE CONTENDER LEVEL
Braden Smith was always going to be a complex story this year, because the thinking was that some nights he was gonna score and some nights he was gonna wheel and deal.
He’s doing both every time out, sparking pace, becoming a threat with the ball and establishing a chemistry with Trey Kaufman-Renn not all that unlike what he had last season with Zach Edey.
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Coming off a zero-turnover, dagger-throwing game at Minnesota, Smith was excellent again vs. Northwestern. The five turnovers jump off the box score, but none were relevant. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter, but game conditions do matter, too.
Smith was rightfully named Preseason Big Ten Player-of-the-Year and he’s certainly lived up to the billing with the command he’s had over these games lately. He himself had one fewer point than Northwestern’s whole team at halftime.
Beyond that, his tenacity as a rebounder is a big deal for this team and his attentiveness on defense Sunday stood out. All stuff that aligns with leadership.
TREY KAUFMAN-RENN’S GRAVITY
Again, in that short-roll game between Smith and Kaufman-Renn, as effective as Kaufman-Renn has been himself scoring out of those actions, it’s the next play that can be lethal. Two games in a row now, he’s drawn the help defender and whipped the ball to the open man for precisely the shot you need to make to make people rethink overloading the lane. Cox’s three 18 seconds in was big in the grand scheme of this game, as Gicarri Harris‘ was at Minnesota.
In the second half, TKR caught the roll pass, drew the defender and threw a lob pass to Caleb Furst, another branch off the offensive tree that’s growing off the Smith-Kaufman-Renn dynamic, one Northwestern never really had an answer for.
When you’e the smaller team, this is how you exploit size. You make it move around. The shot Purdue was most vulnerable to with Zach Edey was that mid-range runner against drop coverage.
This isn’t a guard taking that shot, but similar principles.
