Purdue Loses to Penn State, Falls to 0-2 in Big Ten, Below…Indiana?!?

Earlier today, FOMSF (Friend of Midwest Sports Fans) T-Mill over at Off the Tracks wrote the following in his Purdue-Penn State preview post:

Tonight’s Penn State game has the potential to be one of our greatest victories of the season.

Sorry T-Mill, and you Boilermaker fans out there, but the Boilermakers were unable to get it done on the road against an upstart Penn State team playing very good basketball right now.

And with the Boilermakers’ loss tonight, Indiana fans everywhere were provided with the perhaps the greatest bit of pleasure they will have during what is sure to be an ugly and difficult Big Ten season. This screen capture says it all:

Yes, for perhaps the only time in this Season of Great Expectations for Purdue, and this Season of No Expectations for Indiana, the Hoosiers are above the Boilermakers. Look, am about as die-hard a Hoosier fan as you will find. (As an example, my girlfriend surprised me this Christmas with what she hyped as the “greatest Christmas present ever.” What was it? An autographed Washington Bullets Calbert Cheaney jersey. That’s right, I’m old school IU.) But not even if I am foolish enough to think that this year’s inexperienced and undermanned Indiana team can compete with Matt Painter’s solid Purdue bunch.

So I will enjoy standings that look like what you see above for as long as humanly possible. And get your licks in now Boilermaker fans — you may be better than the Hoosiers this year, but we’ll give you a battle in Bloomington and you know that Crean-Painter will be as competitive as Knight-Keady was within two years.

So what went wrong tonight for the Boilers in their loss to Penn State?

Well for starters, preseason Big Ten Player of the Year Robbie Hummel and Chris Kramer did not play. And then not scoring a field goal for the first five minutes of the game didn’t help either. Nor did the 13-0 run that Penn State went on in the second half. Amazingly, Penn State only shot .387 from the field and .565 from the free-throw line, as opposed to .458 and .846, respectively, for Purdue. Just looking at those numbers, you’d think Purdue won going away.

But those are the quirks of conference play. Purdue was also whistled for 9 more fouls that Penn State, leading to ten more opportunities from the line for the Nittany Lions. That helps to explain the final three point differential as well as anything.

At the end of the day, the Boilers were ranked #14 coming into this game and will now be knocked from their perch as Big Ten favorites. Starting out 0-2 sucks, sure — and the last time it happened to Purdue the finished 3-13 in the Big Ten — but the Boilers took advantage of the fact that they could sneak up on people last year. Now they are the ones being hunted. With Hummel and Kramer back in the lineup Purdue will resume being one of the best teams in the Big Ten and will no doubt finish in the top 3 or 4.

And when that happens — and IU is sitting at the the bottom of the standings with whatever paltry number of victories we have — I’ll always have the screenshot of the standings pictured above to remind me of the one moment during this season when the Hoosiers were over the Boilermakers.

Tags: Big Ten, College Basketball, matt painter, Purdue Boilermakers

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