Jack’s Take: No Secret Method For Indiana Defending Purdue’s Top-Rated Offense

A second-half comeback at Ohio State taught a young Indiana team a lot about winning, and players thought it could serve as a boost in momentum for the final eight games of the season. But a trip to Mackey Arena is next, and the challenge of stopping Zach Edey and all of Purdue’s great 3-point shooters may stop the momentum Indiana worked so hard to build.

Anthony Leal said it best. Indiana’s 76-73 win at Ohio State was “another opportunity for us to learn about winning.”

Though Leal and Trey Galloway, both seniors, made big plays down the stretch, this is still a young Indiana team that started two freshmen and two sophomores on Tuesday. Leal hasn’t played much throughout his four-year career, and five of the nine Hoosiers who played against Ohio State weren’t on the team last season.

It’s taken longer than coach Mike Woodson would have liked, but this team is still learning how to play together and how to win. Injuries certainly haven’t helped. But winning a game that required an 18-point comeback – Indiana’s largest since 1998 – can help build confidence and momentum for a late-season surge.

“It’s a huge win, especially the deficit we came down from,” Malik Reneau said Tuesday. “It just builds our confidence up, gives us ways – we know we can find ways to win, so I mean, that’s huge.”

There’s something to that, but a quick glance at the schedule suggests that sentiment easily could be washed away by Saturday around 10 p.m. ET. That’s because the Hoosiers’ next opportunity to build on that momentum is a trip to Mackey Arena Saturday at 8 p.m. ET to face the No. 2 Purdue Boilermakers, a team riding a seven-game win streak with an average margin of victory of 15.3 points.

All signs point to Indiana’s momentum hitting a brick wall against Matt Painter’s national title-contending squad and the deafening sounds inside Mackey Arena. ESPN’s matchup predictor gives the Boilermakers a 96.9% chance of victory, and KenPom predicts an 85-66 Purdue victory, in line with the 87-66 outcome on Jan. 16 at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

In the first leg of this year's rivalry series, early foul trouble with Mackenzie Mgbako and Kel’el Ware turned a game that was back-and-forth early into a 22-point halftime deficit. The Hoosiers came out of the halftime locker room hot, cutting Purdue’s lead to nine points, but their play in the first 20 minutes made a comeback too much to ask.

On pace to become the first back-to-back National Player of the Year winner since Virginia’s Ralph Sampson from 1980-83, Purdue’s 7-foot-4 Zach Edey scored 33 points and grabbed 14 rebounds. It was Ware’s first game against Edey, adding to the difficulty.

“It takes a game to kind of feel your way through it,” Painter said on Jan. 16. “It's like playing a good pressing team and you press in practice and you're not a pressing team and it's like, 'Okay, we're ready for this team,' and you get to the game and you're like, 'Oh, shit. We didn't see this in practice.' [Ware] ain't seeing [Edey] in practice. So it's difficult to see someone that can move that's 7-foot-4, 300 [pounds] with size 20 [shoes] that plays hard every single play."

Edey, somehow, has gotten even better. His field goal percentage is up, his footwork is more polished, and his improved mobility has boosted Purdue’s ball-screen defense.

Teams like Northwestern, who took Purdue to overtime at Mackey Arena, tried the ultra-physical route against Edey, but three of their best forwards fouled out. Purdue attempted 46 free throws as a result and scored a season-high 105 points.

Northwestern is somewhat opposite of Indiana in that it relies heavily on guards for scoring and has defensive-minded bigs. Indiana can’t afford to implement that strategy, because it needs Reneau and Ware on the court to score. For Woodson, and any team that’s played Edey, there’s no secret method.

“It's a double-edged sword,” Woodson said. “I'm not saying we're not going to bang. We got to attempt to bang and be aggressive with him. If not, damned if you do, damned if you don't.”

Purdue Boilermakers center Zach Edey (15) looks to shoot the ball while Indiana Hoosiers center Kel'el Ware (1) and forward Malik Reneau (5) defend in the second half at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall / Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports

Woodson wants Ware to be more physical with Edey this time around and not let him catch the ball so deep, but he also said there’s risk in picking up fouls when you try to push Edey out of the lane. He said Indiana might also try to front Edey more often.

“You got to bang some with him, because if you don't, then you get embarrassed,” Woodson said. “He's embarrassing a lot of teams … We just got to go in with the mindset that, hey, hopefully we can stay out of foul trouble, bang a little bit, and play aggressive like they do and see what happens.”

This Purdue team is different from last year’s that became the second No. 1 seed to ever lose to a No. 16 seed in the NCAA Tournament. A transfer from Southern Illinois, Jones gives Purdue another experienced ball-handler they didn’t have last season, taking some pressure off Smith and Loyer, who’ve matured as sophomores.

Jones is also a “good-ass 3-point shooter,” as Woodson put it, ranking fifth in the Big Ten in threes made. If a team dedicates all its attention to stopping Edey, Purdue has Jones and six more players shooting 40% or higher from 3-point waiting on the perimeter to burn you.

Aside from Indiana’s brief run at the start of the second half, the first game displayed the pick-your-poison dilemma teams have faced against the 21-2 Boilermakers, who rank No. 1 in both adjusted offensive efficiency and strength of schedule, per KenPom.

Jones and Fletcher Loyer combined to make 7-of-11 3-point attempts in the first game against Indiana, negating an uncharacteristically poor shooting night from point guard Braden Smith.

“Obviously Zach is so dominant in the paint and stuff, but they also have other great players as well that can spread you out and make shots and make tough ones,” Galloway said Friday. “So I think it’s really challenging, but I think our game plan, we’re going to be ready to go and go in there and compete. We’ve got to be confident and believe that we can win, which I believe we can.”

If Indiana is to build on the momentum from the Ohio State win, it has to break through the brick wall waiting in West Lafayette – and that means containing the once and future player of the year, plus all the 3-point shooters that surround him.

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