My Two Cents: Plenty to Improve On for Purdue, But No Reason to Panic

No. 3 Purdue let a seven-point second half lead slip away, and lost at home to Wisconsin 74-69 on Monday night. There were a lot of defensive lapses and too many missed shots, and it added up to a Big Ten loss. But it's also not a reason to panic, because this is still a very good team.

Tom Brew | Jan 4, 2022

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Right from the beginning, Matt Painter has embraced Purdue's lofty national ranking this year, and when the Boilermakers ascended to No. 1 for the first time in school history on Dec. 6 — even if for only a week — he said that it was ''really cool.''

But in the past few weeks, he's also been telling everyone who will listen that his team, despite being very good and loaded with talent and depth, isn't very good defensively. There is, he keeps saying, still so much to work on, so much to get better at.

There was physical proof of that on Monday night, when the No. 3-ranked Boilermakers simply had no answer for Wisconsin's Johnny Davis. The standout sophomore guard scored 37 points and had 14 rebounds, leading the Badgers to a come-from-behind 74-69 victory at Mackey Arena.

Purdue let a seven-point second-half lead disappear, mostly because Davis decided to take over, and the Boilermakers' defense didn't — or couldn't — do anything to prevent it.

“I just thought Wisconsin was just mentally and physically tougher than we were,” Painter said. “The thing I have really harped on to our guys throughout the year, is who are you when you miss your free throws? Who are you when you don’t have a great field goal percentage? Can you still grind games out, can you still win those games?

"Right now, we’re searching for it, we’re really searching for it from a defensive standpoint, and I thought Johnny Davis really exposed that.”

Purdue is 12-2 now, and just 1-2 in the Big Ten, with the loss to Wisconsin stacked on to the December loss at Rutgers, when they couldn't make a stop down the stretch either, and lost on Ron Harper Jr.'s last-second half-court shot.

Plain and simple, this is not a great Purdue team defensively, especially on the perimeter. There's no denying that. They had a seven-point lead with 11 minutes to go — and got outscored 32-20 rest of the way. And giving up 32 was more concerning than only scoring 20.

“You just don’t announce your basketball identity,” Painter said. “You don’t announce your defensive identity. You earn those things. I think their second gear prevented that. When you struggle, you want to look at yourself, which you do. We outrebounded them, but they were quicker to the ball in a couple of scrambles. We couldn’t make those next plays to push the game out there.”

That's the thing about playing basketball in the Big Ten. It's a man's league, and teams like Wisconsin couldn't care less that Purdue is ranked No. 3 in the country. They came to Mackey expecting to win, despite being 12.5-point underdogs, and did everything required to get the W, especially hitting one key shot after another when it mattered the most.

Davis was great, and guard Brad Davidson scored 15 points too, including a couple of huge three-pointers down the stretch in the final four minutes.

Davidson, mind you, has been playing at Wisconsin since 2017. He's played 141 games, and has seen it all. He's never scared, no matter how highly the opponent is ranked. Wisconsin is a tough team. You hit them, they aren't folding. They will make you play right to the end.

Purdue didn't do that.

“They don’t flinch,” Wisconsin coach Greg Gard said of his Badgers. “They continue to battle. They don’t get rattled. They just stay the course and stick to what we do.”

Davis simply did it all, a superstar who is capable of taking over games. He led the Badgers in scoring (37), rebounds (14), assists (3), blocks (2) and steals (2). According to ESPN, Davis is the first Division I player to lead his team in all five categories in a road win over a top-five opponent since Tim Duncan did it for Wake Forest against Maryland on Feb. 1, 1997.

Johnny Davis wasn't even born yet on Feb. 1, 1997.

In other words, Purdue got beat by a once-in-a-generation performance. That's one perspective. Here's another: This was the first time EVER that Wisconsin beat a ranked Purdue team at Mackey. They were 0-20 before Monday. They also hadn't won a game as a 12-point underdog or worse in 25 years.

This was a rarity, without question. But that's also a reminder to simply take a deep breath and relax. Purdue is still a very good team, still just as capable of accomplishing every goal they had Monday morning. It's too easy to overreact these days — so don't do it.

“It shows our team what we’re capable of doing,” Davis said. “We came in tonight, we weren’t scared that they were ranked third in the country (or) that we were playing at Mackey Arena. I just went out and played my game. My teammates did a really good job getting me the ball in the right spots."

Can Purdue still win the Big Ten? Of course. To me, they are still clearly the best team in the league. Can they make an NCAA Tournament run? Certainly.

The biggest issue this team has is a lack of lockdown perimeter defenders, They just aren't there. So there will be times where a guard will go off on them.

Can that be fixed? Not with actual talent, no, but it can with scheme. There are things Purdue can do to not make this happen again. That was evident even in Monday's game, where Purdue defenders knew what they were supposed to do against Davis and the Badgers — but didn't execute it.

Painter is right to keep harping on it, that Purdue needs to be better defensively. Because it does make a difference on the nights where Purdue misses shots.

But let's be real about this, too. How often does that really happen? They are third in the nation in scoring (87.2), third in field goal percentage (51.7), second in rebound margin (13), and top 10-15 in several other offensive categories.

Sure, Davis went nuts on Monday night, but that was also Purdue's worst OFFENSIVE performance of the year. They shot just 41 percent from the field, and Trevion Williams and Zach Edey combined to miss 12 shots — most of them right at the rim. That hasn't happened all year.

Jaden Ivey, the Boilers' leading scorer, was saddled with foul trouble early and made just three baskets in 28 minutes. He's only had one game worse than that all year, and that was in a 44-point blowout against Wright State back in November when he only made two shots. So don't try to tell me you're worried about Jaden Ivey, because I'm sure not worried about him.

Davis, his teammate on the U.S. under-19 gold medal team this summer, got the best of him Monday, but it really, truly is just one night.

Even Sasha Stefanovic was off offensively on Monday night. He was just 2-for-8 shooting and 1-for-5 from three. That's not going to happen very often, either.

In other words, don't crawl into panic mode. I know it's a very Purdue thing to do, because Boilermakers fans know all about heartbreak and heartache and failing to reach expectations.

There are still going to be plenty of nights when Williams and Edey will be unstoppable inside. There will be nights when Ivey will take over a game much like Davis did, and there will be nights when Stefanovic and Purdue knock down threes by the bushel.

So just chill, and get ready for Penn State on Saturday. It's the Big Ten, and it's going to be a long winter.

It's very likely that Purdue will lose a few more games. It's also far more likely that they will win a lot of games. So stop writing them off already. This is still a very good team. And just because they didn't show it in the last 10 minutes Monday doesn't mean that will happen every night.

It won't.

So chill. It's all good.

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