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Takeaways: No. 6 Purdue’s loss at No. 15 Marquette

On3 imageby:Brian Neubert•11/19/24•

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Purdue's loss at Marquette
Jeff Hanisch (Jeff Hanisch-USA Today Sports)

Our post-game analysis following sixth-ranked Purdue’s 76-58 loss at No. 15 Marquette.

PDF: Purdue-Marquette stats

MARQUETTE WAS MARQUETTE BETTER THAN PURDUE WAS PURDUE

That’s a big part of this story, that the Golden Eagles lived up to their frenetic and eclectic defensive identity better than Purdue lived up to its offensive-execution standards. This was an elite defensive performance.

The turnovers were the game. Purdue’s 15 turnovers led to 18 Marquette points. Go back to all Purdue’s losses the past five years or so and you may be surprised to realize how often that’s the story. Very rarely has Purdue gotten beat when it doesn’t turn the ball over.

But forcing turnovers is what Marquette is built for, and after losing to Purdue the past two seasons, the third time was a charm. Marquette fans get free Chick-Fil-A when their team records 32 deflections in a game. That tells you what they’re all about and when that free chicken was clinched in the final 10 minutes, 32 seemed like a lowball number.

The Eagles trapped the ball out of Braden Smith‘s hands often and gummed up the post operation for Trey Kaufman-Renn as well as could have been hoped.

FRESHMEN ARE FRESHMEN

This was not a great night for rookie guards Gicarri Harris and CJ Cox — they were 0-for-8 between them — but that’s the deal when you’re a freshman at this level. They’ll be better because of this experience, both right away and in the long run. You can draw real parallels between where Harris and Cox were for Purdue tonight and where Kam Jones and Stevie Mitchell were for Marquette two seasons ago in a loss in Mackey Arena.

When Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer were freshmen, their freshman moments didn’t come ’til March. That wasn’t normal.

Struggling in November is.

EASY OFFENSE WAS ONE-SIDED

In a game like this, when scoring is so hard to come by, this is where Purdue has often been able to fall back on putbacks or transition opportunities off stops. Neither panned out on Tuesday night, while Marquette lived in transition and got at least eight points off pick-sixes.

Meanwhile, Purdue didn’t do a great job finishing at the rim off some pretty good big-to-big passing, and didn’t cash in enough at the foul line.

Between Kaufman-Renn and Caleb Furst, they went to the line six times and split all six pairs.

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