Purdue basketball found its 'real problems' in blowout exhibition loss to UConn

HARTFORD, CT — Purdue men’s basketball coach Matt Painter asked for a “beehive,” and UConn certainly brought a swarm to PeoplesBank Arena on Tuesday night.

That doesn’t mean the Boilermakers wanted to get stung quite this badly. A 76-53 loss exposed this still-coalescing team in ways its wins over Ball State and Purdue Fort Wayne could not.

That was the point, to a degree. They keep score in exhibition games, of course, and Purdue and Painter want to win them. Those are secondary concerns to getting back on a plane with teachable moments in tow.

Still, when you play a team with three Final Four trips and two national championships in the past four years, you draw eyeballs. This was not the early impression these Boilermakers wanted to make. This was not the team it wanted to be under pressure against the elite, even with plenty of leaves still on the trees.

Suffering an indignity in October, though, only helps if a team confronts its vulnerabilities and repairs them. That cannot be a weeks-long process. Purdue travels to Las Vegas to open the season against Gonzaga on Monday.

Purdue knew what kind of team UConn was before it landed in Hartford. It left determined not to remain the team it appeared to be Tuesday.

“We have some guys that have a false sense of what it’s like to play high-level basketball together,” Painter said. “… Any time you have a different role, you didn’t play as much, you think if I get that opportunity that’s all I need. Well, there’s a lot of people that got that opportunity tonight and I didn’t see that.

“But, now you see our real problems, because that’s a real team. We have to go back to the drawing board and get better at what we do.”

Missing many 3s not Purdue’s biggest offensive problem going forward

One late first-half sequence defines what sort of night this was for Purdue.

Raleigh Burgess went up for a running layup and, simply, missed. But he gathered the rebound and kicked out to Jack Benter behind the 3-point arc. His 3-pointer with 2:25 remaining in the half cut the deficit to 13 points.

Purdue had been 0 for 11 from 3 before that shot. It made only one more the rest of the night – its 2-for-25 night serving as an ice cold homage to the NHL’s Hartford Whalers.

This team almost certainly does not have many 8% 3-point performances in its future. However, this won’t be the last night when shots won’t fall. Whether due to UConn’s feisty pressure or the Boilers splintering a bit from frustration − or a combination – the offense never found a secondary path to success.

Purdue made a concerted effort to get the ball inside to Daniel Jacobsen to open the game and again to open the second half. That was as close as it came to establishing an interior presence. When it didn’t shy away from looking inside, it missed opportunities there on both post-ups and drives to the paint.

For four years, this program grew accustomed to Braden Smith stabilizing the offense when chaos creeped in. Omer Mayer, Luke Ertel and Antione West Jr. are still figuring out how to do the same.

“When you’re missing good shots and then you’re missing layups, I think the frustration builds, and now you start to soul-search out there when you’re playing instead of focusing on the job,” Painter said.

Source: Purdue makes Matt Painter a top-10 paid college basketball coach

Purdue did not help its cause on the boards against UConn

Missing 23 3-pointers and committing 13 turnovers equates to 36 empty possessions. On many nights, against opponents this good, that will be enough to sink the ship.

Purdue could have helped itself more in other areas, though, starting with the boards. After encouraging team rebounding performances in the first two exhibitions, UConn dragged the Boilers back to reality.

The Huskies finished with 15 offensive rebounds. While that only led to a 17-14 edge in second-chance points, the cumulative effect on momentum and the foul situation eventually piled up.

Rebounding has loomed as either this team’s Achilles heel or secret weapon, depending on how it develops over the season. UConn reminded Purdue what winning the boards will require against the best teams on the schedule.

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“It felt tonight like they were the tougher team,” Caden Pierce said. “They were quicker to loose balls. Quicker to the ball in general. It’s just a mentality our team has to carry into each and every game.”

Purdue did open the second half with some success on the boards. It grabbed seven of the first eight, and the resulting rhythm carried over to offense. It had trimmed the deficit to 10 points. If not for the hideous 3-point shooting, it might have been playing UConn even.

In a game that counts, Painter would have kept his starters on the floor. Instead, he sent four players in at the 16:22 mark as scheduled.

“You go and do that and then people don’t play, and then you need them to play in some games on the road and they don’t have the experience, you know, you’re a fool as a head coach,” Painter said.

Last season’s theme concerned whether Purdue would play well enough in other areas to overcome those nights when good shots by good shooters don’t fall. This team, on paper, can defend well enough to offset that. It did so for stretches in the halfcourt Tuesday, though it did not limit UConn’s ability to get out on fast breaks nearly enough.

Lapses which did not show up as obviously against Ball State and PFW glared on Tuesday. Painter doesn’t schedule these pressure tests for the exposure. He does it to be exposed, in however many facets necessary.

UConn lived up to its half of that plan, as Arkansas, Creighton and Kentucky did the previous three years. Those Purdue teams found ways to grow out of those preseason losses.

This team begins its own version of that quest Wednesday morning.

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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue basketball found its ‘real problems’ in blowout exhibition loss to UConn