Three Damaging Trends That Affected Purdue

Purdue didn’t finish the season anywhere near as hoped, losing five of its seven games to not only drop out of the Big Ten regular season title race but also to fall to the 6 seed for this week’s Big Ten Tournament.

It has been an odd season for a Boilermaker team picked to win the league in the preseason, no more dizzying happening than its transition from below-average defensive team in non-conference play to elite defensive team in January to outright bad defensively at times to end the regular season.

There were other other interesting undercurrents to this regular season, as well, three of which are outlined below.

FOUL AND FREE THROW DIFFERENTIAL

There’s nothing that says fouls and free throw attempts have to be even and certainly nothing enduringly binding about Purdue’s long-time advantages in those areas, but things reversed course hard on the Boilermakers this Big Ten season.

Some superlatives …

• Purdue was a minus in the foul-total column this Big Ten season, 338-337, and attempted 23 fewer free throws through 20 league games, despite playing through the conference’s pre-eminent and probably most physical low-post scorer, Trey Kaufman-Renn. Purdue finished 11th in the 18-team Big Ten in free throw rate and was outscored by 10 at the line for the conference season.

• Kaufman-Renn finished the conference season second in scoring at 20.5 points per game. In the context of his offensive game being predicated on physicality and his entire usage profile aligning with drawing fouls, it’s notable to consider his 4.8 foul-shot-per-game average was fewer than 11 other players in the league. Big men Vladislav Goldin and Derik Queen led the league in FTA at 5.8 and 4.8, respectively. Kaufman-Renn’s usage rate in Purdue’s offense dwarfs those of both those players. Kaufman-Renn actually led the Big Ten in that category, used on 30.6 percent of Purdue’s possessions, according to KenPom. He’s one of only three Big Ten players in the top 100 nationally.
Further, Braden Smith, the best, most aggressive and most downhill-oriented guard in the Big Ten, and the most aggressively hedged by defenses, averaged only 2.5 foul-shot attempts per Big Ten game this season despite playing 37 minutes per game and averaging the fifth-most shots in the conference. Of the Big Ten’s top 20 scorers, only Iowa’s Josh Dix shot fewer free throws on average.

• Purdue wound up reaching the bonus in 30 of its 40 halves in Big Ten play, the double bonus in 16 of them. Opponents hit the single bonus 29 times out of 40 and the double bonus 10 times.
But zeroing in even further to the final seven games, of which Purdue lost five, the numbers are really different, even though the Boilermakers didn’t play different.
Purdue’s end-of-season slide of five losses in seven games began at Michigan, where it was called for 10 more fouls and attempted 18 fewer free throws, just a few games after all such numbers were almost exactly even in a blowout Purdue win. Starting with that game in Ann Arbor, Purdue reached the bonus in only eight of 14 halves, two of those being too late to matter, the double bonus just twice. Opponents hit the bonus in 11 of those 14 halves and the double bonus six times, though Purdue having to foul late a few times padded the final numbers a bit.
Purdue committed, or was called for, at least, 12 or more second-half fouls in five of its last seven games. That never was true for its opponents.
All five of Purdue’s foul-outs this Big Ten season occurred since that Feb. 11 game at Michigan. Its lone DQ prior to that night was Kaufman-Renn fouling out vs. Texas A&M in December.

No one could have reasonably expected this Purdue team to enjoy the same foul-differential advantages its size has afforded it in past seasons. But considering its history of minimizing fouls by approach, the fact its defensive system isn’t overly aggressive, the presence of a great post scorer and some of the craftiest guards in the country, you also couldn’t have expected that advantage to swing to full disadvantage.

THREES BY NON-SHOOTERS

Yes, Purdue concedes open looks to players analytics suggest can be left open, but even with that said, Purdue got burned more than the numbers would suggest, never more than when Ohio State’s Sean Stewart threw in a shot clock-beating three off an in-bound after the Boilermakers had stifled the Buckeyes’ initial offensive action. Ohio State went on to win that game in Mackey Arena by, you guessed it, three points.

It was the first three of Stewart’s college career and remains his only three, and one of just two attempts. He didn’t shoot any threes in 277 minutes as a freshman at Duke and tried just two in 537 minutes this season.

Point is, one of the most damaging shots made against Purdue — one you might have forgotten about — wasn’t made by a bad shooter. It was made by a total non-shooter.

Two other outliers from games the Boilermakers won.

• Derik Queen of Maryland was 2-for-5 at Purdue, 0-for-19 against everyone else.

• After going 3-of-14 at Utah State last season, Great Osobor of Washington was 5-for-5 vs. Purdue this season in Seattle. He’d make three more the rest of the season and finish shooting 24 percent for the last-place Huskies.

A few other notable notables …

• After Kamari McGee was ejected, Wisconsin turned to walk-on redshirt freshman Jack Janicki to play 17 key minutes. In that time, he was 3-for-4 from three en route to making 7-of-24 in Big Ten play.

• Purdue was up 11 with 3:46 left in the first half before Danny Wolf‘s spastic three trying to draw a foul was central to the Wolverines narrowing it to two at halftime. Wolf is an OK shooter, but he wasn’t even truly trying to shoot that ball.

Note: According to Synergy Sports, opponents averaged .834 points per possession when pushed into the final four seconds of the shot clock, accounting for 8 percent of Purdue’s defensive possessions. That’s the bottom 12th percentile nationally. In this largely luck-driven category, only USC was worse among Big Ten teams.

Opponents made 30 percent of their threes inside the final four seconds of the shot clock.

LEADS THAT ESCAPED

This isn’t a fluke, by any means, as Purdue had a say in these matters, but a common thread about its Big Ten losses from Jan. 1 on were the leads that got away.

In the Boilermakers’ six losses following the resumption of Big Ten in January, they enjoyed peak leads that averaged out to 10.7 points, though some’s timing seemed more secure than others; leading Michigan State by seven halfway through the first is barely worth mentioning, but it’s just a single data point here.

Illinois’ 16-3 run to close the game Friday night after Purdue led by five with only 2:52 to play was not a first-of-its-kind sort of experience for the Boilermakers, who repeatedly saw sometimes-robust leads evaporate often very quickly, more suddenly than the normal ebbs and flows of basketball. The foul line/bonus issue outlined above was a common denominator in many such instances, especially closing halves or games. Buzzer-beating threes, too.

Purdue led Ohio State by 16 with 30 seconds left in the first, then the Buckeyes scored 10 straight between the end of one half and the start of the next.

At Michigan, Purdue held an 11-point lead with less than four minutes left in the first, only for the Wolverines to respond 9-0. To Purdue’s credit, the lead hit 10 again in the second half, but Michigan used a late 12-2 run — the foul issue looming larger than ever — for a smash-and-grab outcome that began Purdue’s season-changing slide.

Purdue led Wisconsin by nine at 4:45 of the first only to lead by just one at halftime; at Michigan State, the Purdue lead was six at 4:26 of the first, before turnovers catalyzed a 10-0 Spartan run that changed that game.

The Boilermakers held a solid 12-point halftime lead at IU, only for the Hoosiers to score the first seven points of the second — Purdue’s turnovers again — to trigger a stunning post-halftime rout.

Finally, the Illinois game, where a 7-0 Illini run erased a late nine-point first-half Purdue lead, well before the game ended disastrously for Purdue. Will Riley‘s end-of-half three, much like Bruce Thornton‘s for Ohio State a month earlier, loomed large.

(Note: End-of-game-clock shots are not part of the shot-clock data cited above, but the same in spirit.)

This unfortunate trending for Purdue wasn’t just random, as turnovers and distinct defensive regression from January were central to this pattern.