WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Even with Purdue’s pressure defense, transition offense and home-court advantage, Bill Carmody knew what Northwestern had to do to beat the Boilermakers.
Stop Willie Deane.
Unfortunately for the NU head coach and his team, Deane wouldn’t cooperate.
The senior guard scored 23 points on 8 of 16 shooting in Purdue’s 82-68 win Saturday at Mackey Arena, but two shots stuck out in Carmody’s mind.
With the Boilermakers leading NU 35-30 in the final seconds of the first half, Deane promptly dribbled down the floor and drained a 3-pointer over Cats’ center Aaron Jennings to give Purdue its largest lead.
Then, after NU had clawed within four points with 5:52 left in the game, Deane — the Big Ten’s leading scorer in 2001-02 — pulled up on the left side and nailed another trey.
“We let their best player hurt us,” Carmody said. “He made some tough shots, but big players make big plays.”
Junior guard Jitim Young led the Cats with 21 points. Jennings, a senior, added 14 points and seven boards and played a season-high 37 minutes. T.J. Parker was limited to eight points by Purdue’s freshman point guard Brandon McKnight, breaking a streak of 11 games of double-figure scoring.
NU (8-5, 0-2 Big Ten) will try to win its first conference game Wednesday night when it heads back to the Hoosier State to face Indiana.
The Cats controlled the game’s first 10 minutes and led by as many as seven in the first half. Jennings nailed a 3-pointer and posted up freshman Matt Kiefer for a layup, and Young beat Kenneth Lowe off the dribble and nailed a 15-footer to highlight an 11-3 NU run.
But Purdue (8-4, 1-0) raised its defensive intensity, and its man-to-man scheme began to disrupt NU’s rhythm. The Cats turned over the ball nine times in the half, two more than their total in last Wednesday’s Big Ten opener against Iowa. NU finished with 16 turnovers, which resulted in 31 points for the Boilermakers.
“The first 10 minutes we were doing exactly what we wanted to do, moving in certain spots and doing things we worked on. But it seemed to die after that,” Carmody said. “Whether we got tired or what, I don’t know, but their defense had a lot to do with it.”
A David Teague trey sandwiched between two Deane 3-pointers gave Purdue a 38-30 lead and left the crowd roaring at the break. (They were soon put to sleep by a halftime show featuring an office supply triathlon of alphabetizing, folding and stapling.)
NU made its first run of the second half with Deane sitting on the bench. Young twice cut the lead to five with a tomahawk dunk off a steal and a jumper, but both times Deane came back on the court and lengthened Purdue’s lead.
Last Wednesday, Iowa let the Cats back in the game with shoddy free-throw shooting, but Keady’s disciplined squad hit its last 10 from the charity stripe.
“We did a good job of controlling the rhythm and we did a lot of the things we wanted to do,” Young said. “We just had a couple lapses in the game. If we want to win games, we have to be a consistent team.”
NU’s inability to gain the momentum had a lot to do with its problems stopping the Boilermakers’ best player.
“It was mostly Deane getting the ball and coming right at you. We couldn’t do anything about it, even with three guys back in transition,” Carmody said.
“One guy makes a difference in this game.”
