The plan was for junior forward Drew Crawford to get the ball at the top of the key. Instead, it was senior forward John Shurna chucking up a long-range three-pointer as Northwestern fell to Purdue 58-56 Saturday.
The Boilermakers had taken the lead on an off-balance runner by forward Robbie Hummel with eight seconds remaining. Needing to go the length of the court in those final eight ticks, freshman guard Dave Sobelewski ran into trouble near midcourt and gave the ball to Shurna in the last two seconds for the desperation heave.
“It hurts to lose,” Crawford said. “We’ve been in this position for a few weeks now and it’s tough. I know next game we’ll be coming out hungry and ready to play.”
Saturday’s game was evenly matched throughout with neither team taking the game by the throat. The Boilermakers held the largest lead of the contest at nine points with 16 minutes and 47 seconds left in the game, but the Wildcats went on a 10-0 run over the next two minutes and 47 seconds to snatch away the lead.
The back and forth nature of the game led to an intense last minute of play. In those last 60 seconds, junior guard Reggie Hearn used isolation to drive the baseline and hit a layup off the glass to tie the game at 56-56. After 25 seconds of solid defense, guard Lewis Jackson was able to get some penetration and dish the ball to Hummel for the winning score.
“In the 1-3-1 (defense of NU), we weren’t dictating anything,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “We were fortunate that Lewis got enough penetration to draw the defense where Rob could get that catch and then beat the guy off the closeout. Anytime you have a guy like Hummel, you want the ball in his hands to make the decision or make the shot. He made a good decision.”
Despite beating the 1-3-1 zone for the winning basket, Purdue struggled with NU’s secret weapon. Painter said despite only having five turnovers in the game, his team struggled to find open looks against NU’s signature zone defense. When facing the normal man-to-man defense, Purdue was able to get to the basket and find open jump shots.
The Cats held the edge in most of the important statistical categories. NU, the worst rebounding team in the Big Ten, outmuscled Purdue 37-23 on the glass. The Boilermakers attempted to stifle the Cats’ Princeton offense with a smaller, more agile lineup, which gave NU more opportunities at rebounds. The Cats got 13 offensive boards, but only manged to convert those second-chance opportunities into eight points.
“A lot of them were just hustle rebounds,” Painter said. “Northwestern was quicker to the ball. They got more long rebounds, they got more 50-50 balls. Normally, when that happens you get beat, so we feel very fortunate getting outrebounded by 14 and still had a chance to win at the end.”
However, the difference in the game was the points off of turnovers. NU had 16 turnovers, six more than its season average, which led to 21 Purdue points. Meanwhile the Boilermakers turned it over five times, resulting in four points for the Cats. Hearn said he was shocked by the number of turnovers and admitted he forced some passes when he shouldn’t have.
“I was trying to be aggressive and was forcing things when it wasn’t there,” Hearn said. “It was more us being sloppy overall.”
The game was eerily similar to losses against Illinois and Michigan earlier in the month in which NU could not close out games in final minutes. In both of those contests, NU’s final-possession plays did not produce the desired result, which forced the players to improvise. The Cats can add Saturday’s final possession to that list of failed last-second improvisations.
“We didn’t get what we wanted,” coach Bill Carmody said. “The time before that we got exactly what we wanted with Reggie. Sometimes you get (what you want) and sometimes you don’t get it.”
