WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Following Sunday’s decisive loss at Purdue, coach Chris Collins identified “slow starts” as a key concern for his team.
In their last three games – against Northeastern, Penn State and Purdue – the Wildcats (10-5, 1-3 Big Ten) have allowed their opponents to build leads of eight points or more before the first media timeout.
Those early deficits have forced Collins’ group to play catch-up from the opening minutes, and against the Boilermakers (11-4, 3-1 Big Ten), NU never led in the 79-61 defeat.
“We’ve always been a team that has really bounced back from tough times, the last couple years with this group,” Collins said. “I didn’t know that we would win the game, but I really thought we were going to be ready to fight and battle and see what happened out there.”
Collins often calls Mackey Arena the toughest road environment in the Big Ten, and from the moment Purdue guard C.J. Cox drilled a three on the opening possession, the hostile atmosphere was clear – loud and charged, even without the student section, which was still on winter break.
After the first four minutes, Purdue had built an eight-point lead with an 11-3 run to start the game. A pull-up jumper from senior guard Brooks Barnhizer and a three-pointer from graduate student guard Jalen Leach cut the deficit to three, but that was the closest to the Boilermakers that NU would get for the rest of the afternoon.
From that point on, Purdue’s star point guard Braden Smith put on a show. Smith sank three three-pointers in the first half, all of which came off turnovers by Barnhizer.
“[Barnhizer] got himself into some tough spots by trying to do too much and making some plays that weren’t characteristic of him,” Collins said.
By halftime, Smith had nearly matched NU’s total offensive output, scoring 17 points to the ’Cats’ 18.
Barnhizer ended up with eight of the team’s 13 turnovers, but Collins said he wasn’t overly concerned about his ball security. Most of the turnovers came in the frontcourt, where Barnhizer found himself trying to take on multiple Purdue defenders at once to find the basket, even losing his fake two front teeth in the process with 5:54 remaining in the first half.
“We didn’t lose the game today because of the turnovers. We lost because Purdue had more fight. They were ready to go right from the beginning,” Collins said.
After the game, Purdue coach Matt Painter said that keeping Barnhizer and junior forward Nick Martinelli out of the paint was a key priority for his team going into the game.
Prior to Sunday’s game, the pair were the only teammates in the country to average 20-plus points per game. Against Purdue, Martinelli and Barnhizer were held to a collective 21 points with 10 turnovers.
“We just didn’t want them getting into a rhythm of scoring on us getting fouled, just kind of having the smorgasbord of everything,” Painter said of Martinelli and Barnhizer. “How we did things is just really a backhanded compliment to those two guys.”
While Martinelli, Barnhizer and Leach all wound up with low double-digit scoring outputs, graduate student guard Ty Berry and graduate student center Matt Nicholson both put up zero points and only played 13 minutes apiece.
In their stead, freshman guards Angelo Ciaravino and K.J. Windham saw more playing time than they were used to — marking the second time in as many games that Collins leaned on them for more than just a handful of minutes.
Ciaravino, who hails from Chicago, led NU in scoring Sunday with a career-high 19 points on an 8-of-14 clip that included three treys.
“I was playing the guys I thought were competing,” Collins said. “I was just trying to find a group out there that was going to fight.”
Collins said he was impressed with the energy that some of his role players brought to the table, but that there was still work to be done to alleviate the pressure on Barnhizer and Martinelli, whose production has often been pivotal to the team’s success.
The ’Cats will look to put the decisive defeat against Purdue in the rearview mirror and look ahead to facing Michigan State at home next Sunday. That game will air on FOX at 11 a.m. Central Standard Time.
“There’s always a couple games that you look back on every year where you just don’t have it. And we didn’t have it [Sunday],” Collins said.
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