The Purdue Rollercoaster: 3 Takeaways from the Win Over Washington

If you just woke up, checked the box score, saw “Purdue 81, Washington 73,” and went about your day, you missed the actual show. That final score is a liar. It tells you it was a comfortable, single-digit grind in the Big Ten. It doesn’t tell you about the absolute panic attack, the exhilaration, or the weirdly confusing dominance that happened inside Mackey Arena on Wednesday night.

The fifth-ranked Boilermakers are now 14-1 and sitting pretty at 4-0 in conference play. On paper, it’s perfection. But if you watched the game, you know the “Purdue Experience” is rarely a straight line. It’s a heart-rate variability test disguised as a basketball game. Wednesday night was no different, featuring everything from a star player in foul jail to a rebounding clinic that would make an 80s piston proud.

Here is the real breakdown of what went down in West Lafayette.

Surviving the Braden Smith Foul Trouble Nightmare

Let’s be honest: when Braden Smith picked up his third foul with 4:20 left in the first half, the collective blood pressure in Mackey Arena spiked. Smith is the engine, the GPS, and the steering wheel of this team. When he went to the bench, the script usually says Purdue should struggle.

He had a rough opening act two fouls in under 11 minutes, then the third almost immediately after subbing back in. It was the kind of sequence that usually doom-spirals a team. But a funny thing happened on the way to disaster: the bench didn’t just survive; they thrived.

Enter Omer Mayer. The freshman didn’t look like a deer in headlights; he looked like he was waiting for the keys to the car. He dropped five points in the first half, including a buzzer-beater that felt like an emotional dagger to the Huskies. Instead of the lead shrinking with Smith in foul purgatory, Purdue actually stretched the lead from 10 to 17.

This is the stuff that matters in March. We know Smith can drop 23 points and seven assists which, by the way, he still managed to do despite the foul trouble because he’s ridiculous. But seeing guys like CJ Cox, Oscar Cluff and Mayer step up when the main guy sits? That’s the difference between a good team and a Final Four contender.

The Rebounding Clinic: Bullying the Bullies

Here’s a stat that should be tattooed on the forehead of every Purdue big man: 37-25.

That was the rebounding margin. Washington isn’t a small team. They walked into West Lafayette averaging over 40 rebounds a game. They pride themselves on cleaning the glass. Purdue looked at that scouting report and tossed it in the trash.

Trey Kaufman-Renn was playing a different sport than everyone else in the paint. He finished with a monster double-double 14 points and 14 rebounds. He was a vacuum cleaner. However, the most impressive part wasn’t just what Purdue got; it was what they took away. Washington’s Hannes Steinbach usually inhales almost 12 boards a game. The Boilers held him to four. Four! That is a defensive strangulation.

When you can take an opponent’s biggest strength—their size and athleticism on the boards, and turn it into their biggest weakness, you win ball games. It wasn’t flashy, and it won’t make the SportsCenter Top 10, but that rebounding margin was where the game was actually won.

The Art of the “Almost” Collapse

Okay, we have to talk about the elephant in the room. Why does Purdue love to play with its food?

For the second game in a row, the Boilers built a lead that should have allowed fans to leave early to beat traffic, only to let the opponent hang around. Purdue was up by 23 points in the second half. Twenty-three! That should be “empty the bench” time. Instead, Washington clawed back, cutting the lead to eight and making things uncomfortably sweaty down the stretch.

We saw this movie against Wisconsin on Saturday, too. Is it boredom? Is it a lack of killer instinct? Or is it just the chaotic nature of college basketball?

To be fair, Purdue hasn’t really played a close game since November (shoutout to that Memphis game). Maybe they just forgot how to close the door because they haven’t had to slam it shut in a while. But letting a team hang around when you had them on the ropes is a dangerous habit to form.

At the end of the day, a win is a win. 14-1 looks beautiful in the standings. But if Matt Painter has anything to yell about in practice tomorrow, it’s going to be about that final ten minutes. You can’t let teams up off the mat when you’re hunting for a championship.