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PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Most of Purdue men’s basketball’s veteran, tested roster has begun to run out of new experiences to cross off its to-do list.
Win a Big Ten championship? Done that a couple of times. Go deep in the NCAA tournament? You might have heard about that Final Four run two years ago.
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What regular-season experiences remain for these Boilermakers to accomplish for the first time?
How about an emphatic start to the road portion of the Big Ten Conference schedule? The final chance for this group of seniors to launch itself into league play comes Tuesday night at Rutgers.
Of the last six conference road openers, the best showing came at Nebraska in 2022. Purdue blew a 14-point lead with 15 minutes remaining in regulation and were nearly undone by Keisei Tominaga’s 19 points off the bench.
There’s your highlight. The other five games were losses. Last season’s sloppy, jarring beatdown at Penn State actually marked the Boilermakers’ sixth loss in its last seven December road games.
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It’s not as if Purdue keeps opening Big Ten play against national championship contenders, either. Other losses came against Nebraska, Iowa, Northwestern and the Scarlet Knights. They upended a Jaden Ivey and Zach Edey fronted team in 2021.
Sometimes those losses are simply a quirk of the schedule. Purdue might have lost the same game in January or February.
Other times, they speak to a vulnerability which must be overcome to remain in the Big Ten championship race.
Last season might be the best example of all. Penn State would go on to finish 16-15 and next-to-last in the Big Ten. On Dec. 5, though, they looked like the team with deep NCAA tournament upside. Purdue turned the ball over 24 times, with leaders such as Trey Kaufman-Renn (seven), Fletcher Loyer (five) and Braden Smith (three) accounting for over half of them.
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Penn State led by 27 with under 10 minutes to play. This wasn’t one that got away.
So taking care of the ball should have…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/purdue-basketball-seeks-3rd-big-094705702.html
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Publish date : 2025-12-02 09:47:00
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