Men’s Basketball

Northwestern proved unable to match up against No. 17 Purdue’s tremendous size in a 71-61 loss Tuesday.

The Boilermakers (21-6, 9-5 Big Ten) out-rebounded the Wildcats (17-10, 5-9) by a whopping 45-24 margin, the biggest rebounding deficit for NU in more than two years. The 7-foot Purdue center A.J. Hammons pulled down 12 rebounds to go with a team-leading 18 points as the senior star dominated inside.

Hammons and his fellow frontcourt players, center Isaac Haas and forward Caleb Swanigan, outmuscled and outplayed every player the Wildcats (17-10, 5-9) threw at them, forcing freshman center Dererk Pardon to foul out and senior center Alex Olah, freshman forward Aaron Falzon and sophomore forward Gavin Skelly to rack up four fouls each.

“Their strength of going inside, their rebounding, their physicality, put a lot of pressure on us,” coach Chris Collins said. “When they’re calling it tight like that on those guys, they’re so big … and it’s going to be really impossible to stop them.”

Senior guard Tre Demps led the way for the Cats with 16 points, shooting 7-for-13 and pacing the offense with well-timed buckets throughout the night. Sophomore guard Bryant McIntosh added 14 points and three assists, while Olah scored 10 of his 12 points in the second half.

NU did little to counteract Purdue’s advantage inside with its perimeter shooting. The team missed nine of their first 10 tries from deep and finished the game 6-for-27.

Collins said he felt his team would need to hit 11 or 12 3-pointers and “at least 20” of their attempts were open shots, but their inability to get such shots to fall proved costly.

Purdue dominated early on and appeared en route to a thorough blowout victory, but an 8-2 surge to end the half pulled the Cats back into the game at halftime, trailing 35-27.

The positive momentum continued after the break as the visitors trailed by as little as 4 points on several occasions and cut the lead to 56-50 with under eight minutes to play.

However, Purdue’s physical dominance helped it maintain the lead and eventually pull away, opening up the perimeter down the stretch as NU collapsed defensively into the paint to compensate for their foul issues.

Back-to-back 3-pointers by the Boilermakers’ Ryan Cline and Johnny Hill stretched the lead to 62-50 with under six minutes left, putting the contest essentially out of reach.

“The biggest shot of the game was Ryan Cline coming off a ball screen, hitting a 3,” McIntosh said. “We go down (the court) and we miss a 3 really bad, and that was the game.”

Purdue entered the game as the second-best team in the conference in both free throw percentage and average rebounding margin, and it delivered in both regards. Hammons alone attempted and made more free throws than all of the Cats combined, going 8-for-11 and boosting his team to a 21-for-28 accord at the charity stripe as they rode the double-bonus for the final 10:52 of the game.

The vast difference at the free-throw line not only affected the score immensely but also prevented the Cats from gaining any rhythm or flow in the game.

“They blow up all your sets,” Demps said. “They’re extremely sharp on the offensive end and that’s why they’re good. We just had a couple key breakdowns late that really killed us.”

This story was updated with postgame quotes.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the height of Purdue center A.J. Hammons. He is 7 feet tall. The Daily regrets the error.

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