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WEST LAFAYETTE — Fletcher Loyer knows what professional basketball road trips entail, the Purdue basketball guard having grown up watching his father, John, live that lifestyle as an NBA assistant.
So when he dismisses any similarity between an NBA West Coast jaunt and the one the Boilermakers make to Washington and Oregon this week, he knows of what he speaks. The team will adjust to the three-hour time change, just as it did to win the Rady Children’s Invitational in San Diego earlier this season.
The intangibles necessary to win on the road — factors Purdue turned more in its favor recently — do not change for the Pacific time zone.
Purdue coach Matt Painter said the typical attention to fatigue and injury prevention will be addressed. He’s less concerned with his players’ bodies this week than wih their minds. He’s already seen the latter cost his team on the road this season much more than the former.
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The Boilermakers already took one conference road loss at Penn State. It cannot take an abundance of them and keep its head above water in the Big Ten championship race. It cannot afford a blip in concentration on this rare back-to-back road assignment.
“You do everything in terms of travel and preventing injuries, and you do everything in your power to help the players be ready to go,” Painter said. “But the mental is more important than the physical. Now being sharp. Now understanding what the game plan is and how we want to go about it — and then just staying connected..”
Other league championship contenders already saw their fortunes change on their lone western excursion.
Michigan won at USC and UCLA — the latter a victory so emphatic it sent Bruins coach Mick Cronin into a postgame tirade against his own team. Iowa posts up in Los Angeles for the same combo this week.
Illinois took a somewhat surprising route to its Pacific Northwest sweep, first clobbering the Ducks 109-77 then sneaking past the Huskies by…
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Author : IndyStar | The Indianapolis Star
Publish date : 2025-01-15 09:25:00
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