Another night, another ranked team got spanked on the road. It happened twice Tuesday, five more times Wednesday — and to the reigning national runners-up on Thursday.
Final score: Penn State 81, Purdue 70.
The game was way more lopsided than that margin suggests. Penn State led by double-digits 12 minutes in, by 16 points at halftime and by 27 with 11:04 remaining. By then, the uncertainty was over — point being it didn’t matter that the Boilermakers closed on a 34-18 run. They still lost by 11 while turning the ball over 24 times.
Trey Kaufman-Renn (7), Fletcher Loyer (5) and Braden Smith (3) combined for 15 of the turnovers.
“When it’s that many turnovers, and your top three players have 15, you’re always gonna look at it from your perspective — and then I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t start it off by giving [Penn State] credit because I thought they were really good,” said Purdue coach Matt Painter. “I thought [Penn State’s] Ace Baldwin did a really good job of trying to disrupt Braden and push him out and do other things. … I thought they did a fantastic job. Give them all the credit in the world. I thought we did a poor job of handling it, and as the head coach I didn’t have them ready to play.”
Purdue is down to No. 12 in Friday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings. The Boilermakers will return home this weekend to play Maryland, which is No. 16 in the Top 25 And 1. That game is scheduled to tip Sunday at noon ET inside Mackey Arena, where Purdue has won 22 straight contests.
