WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Early in Friday’s game between IU men’s basketball and No. 7 Purdue, Boilermakers forward Trey Kaufman-Renn outmuscled Indiana’s Tucker DeVries for a layup. Kaufman-Renn pumped his fist several times as he shuffled back on defense, as if to gesture that he’d do that all night long.
He wasn’t wrong.
Purdue was the aggressor at Mackey Arena, for all 40 minutes. Indiana gutted out a 72-67 win over its in-state nemesis in late January at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington, but those Hoosiers never showed up on Friday. The Boilermakers ran away with a 93-64 win, their most lopsided victory in the rivalry since 1969.
“Nights like these are hard,” IU head coach Darian DeVries said after the game. “They did everything they needed to do to put us in some tough spots tonight, and took advantage of it, especially on the offensive end. We just could never get them under control.”
Indiana (17-10, 8-8 Big Ten) doesn’t have many positives to point to after a loss like this. Purdue (22-5, 12-3) dominated every facet of the game.
After IU’s 20-point loss at Illinois on Sunday, Sam Alexis said the team needed to show more toughness and physicality to fix its persistent rebounding issue. That message didn’t land — Purdue out-rebounded the Hoosiers 30-15 on Friday. Indiana grabbed only one offensive rebound all night, setting a new season-low.
Purdue also won the turnover battle, committing just seven and forcing 11 on the other end, turning that into 16 points off turnovers.
“I was pleased from a rebound perspective. Anytime you get 19 more possessions than somebody and you’re playing at home, you’re gonna have success,” Purdue head coach Matt Painter said. “Taking care of the ball and rebounding the ball are the most important things.”
The Boilermakers got just about anything they wanted offensively all game. Kaufman-Renn scored 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting, and IU had no answers for him. DeVries’ group rarely provided much resistance for Braden Smith and others driving into the lane, and the All-American guard finished with 15 points and eight assists. Fletcher Loyer and Omer Mayer scored 18 points apiece.
Purdue, as a team, scored 1.55 points per possession. The Hoosier offense will never have a chance to make a difference when they’re giving up that much on the other end.
The officiating crew called a tight game, which contributed to Indiana landing in foul trouble late in the first half. But excessive fouling has been a weakness for the Hoosiers throughout the season — that’s just how this team plays.
Things bubbled up for DeVries early in the second half, when he called two timeouts in the first 4:06. The Boilermakers led by 17 points at halftime, and opened the second half on a 12-6 run in that stretch that prompted the timeouts.
“Offensively, I thought we got some really good looks in those first few possessions. Didn’t convert on them. But defensively, I didn’t think we had them under control, at all, to start the half,” DeVries said. “Didn’t want to have happen what happened, and have it get away from us too quickly. … We just couldn’t get anything going.”
Offensively, Indiana had four players score in double figures, and the team managed to score 1.07 points per possession. But the team rarely settled into any sort of groove on that end, either.
The Hoosiers had too many broken and stalled possessions that resulted in bad shot attempts, particularly early in the game. They needed to get far more paint touches than they actually got. And they finished 7 for 20 from 3-point range, their fewest attempts in any game all season.
And as Purdue’s lead grew and the game slipped further out of reach, IU fell victim to some more mental mistakes; more defensive breakdowns, concerning effort levels, and general malaise set in on the court and across the bench.
The Hoosiers will have to rinse this game quickly, with a winnable game against Northwestern on deck in Bloomington followed by some critical matchups in early March. And they can’t afford to have this version of their team show up again.
“These guys will be focused. They’ll be ready to go on Tuesday. They have been all year,” DeVries said. “We played two really good teams (Illinois and Purdue), got beat on the road. Disappointed that we weren’t, certainly, more competitive in the games, to make it come down to the stretch. But we gotta let those go. We gotta go beat Northwestern.”
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