How trustworthy is Purdue basketball’s impressive start to the regular season? – Annenberg Media

With a bit over five minutes left in the first half of Tuesday night’s game versus the unranked Nebraska Cornhuskers, Purdue Boilermaker guard Fletcher Loyer knocked down a three-pointer from the top of the key to give Purdue a 25-19 lead. In the remaining 25 minutes of the game, the Boilermakers were outscored by 22 points en route to the end of both their seven-game winning streak and their time atop the AP Poll.

Coming into the game, Nebraska sported a formidable 12-2 record, but none of their wins had come against a ranked opponent, much less the No. 1 team in the nation. Conference road losses are not uncommon, but Purdue’s recent history is marked by disappointing upsets like this, especially during the postseason. Is their loss to Nebraska indicative of another incoming trip to March Madness cut short?

Considering that reigning Naismith Men’s College Player of the Year, 7-foot-4 Zach Edey, wears the Purdue white and gold, another early tournament loss would be a generational letdown. Edey is arguably surpassing his accolade-ridden efforts from last season: he is averaging 22.3 points per game while converting on 63.4% of his field goal attempts. Edey also blocks 2.3 shots per game and grabs over 10 rebounds per game. As one of the tallest players in the country, Edey is the giant centerpiece of Purdue’s brilliant start to the season.

After his third year with the Boilermakers, fans were unsure whether he would leave Purdue for the NBA draft, but Edey elected to return for his senior campaign. Through 16 games, Edey has led Purdue to a 14-2 record.

The Boilermakers’ dominance throughout the first half of the season should not surprise fans who follow college basketball all year long. In eight of the last nine seasons, Purdue has earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament, and this is their third consecutive season donning the AP Poll’s top spot for at least one week. In fact, since the first season of Matt Painter’s tenure as head coach in 2006, Purdue has earned at least a share of the Big Ten regular season championship in four different seasons, a feat achieved by only eleven other power five teams in the same time frame.

The only difference between the Boilermakers and those other schools? Success in March. Since 2006, those programs have accounted for thirty appearances in the Final Four and eight national titles. The only schools not to reach the Final Four among them are the Arizona Wildcats — another team plagued by recent NCAA tournament upsets — and the Boilermakers.

With consistently excellent play, why hasn’t Purdue been able to reach the Final Four in the Matt Painter era?

Since Zach Edey’s freshman season, each of the Boilermakers’ three NCAA tournament losses have come in the form of major upsets against double-digit seeds. In 2021, a fourth-seed Purdue lost an overtime battle to a 13-seed North Texas Mean Green team in the round of 64. North Texas ran a three-guard lineup that outscored Purdue’s traditional two-guard lineup 53-35.

The next season, when Purdue lost to 15-seed Saint Peter’s Peacocks in the sweet sixteen, they moved to a three-guard lineup. However, their guards were still outscored, and combined for six turnovers.

Infamously, in 2023, Purdue became the second 1-seed in history to lose in the round of 64, with the upset coming against 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson Knights. With each of their three starting guards from the 2022 NCAA tournament either graduating, transferring, or declaring for the NBA Draft, Purdue started three different guards, two of them freshman, against the Knights. The Boilermakers’ guard woes from years’ past continued — their twelve turnovers were triple the turnover output of Fairleigh Dickinson’s guards, and their guards were also outscored by 24 points.

On Tuesday night, Purdue’s starting guards were similarly inefficient, shooting a measly 34% from the floor with a combined nine turnovers. Fortunately, this performance is atypical for the Boilermakers this year. Braden Smith has played a particularly key supplementary role this season, averaging 12.8 points and 6.7 assists per game. However, he was part of the Boilermaker guards’ disastrous performance against Fairleigh Dickinson, missing eight of his ten field goal attempts and coughing up seven turnovers.

Regardless of Purdue’s regular season success, who’s to say Smith and the rest of Purdue’s guards will overcome the patterns of their disappointing tournament performances? Smith has upped his scoring output by about three points per game this season, and has improved his 3-point percentage from a respectable 37.6% to an otherworldly 47.9%. Purdue’s other returning starting guard, sophomore Fletcher Loyer, has also improved his 3-point stroke, going from 32.6% to 40.3%. These improvements in shooting could be the difference between winning and disappointing against inferior competition in the postseason.

Still, shooting percentages over the course of the season fail to fully account for the game-to-game variance (in other words, shooting luck) that plagues every team on both sides of the ball. For example, Nebraska made a blistering 60.3% of their three-point attempts against Purdue. Regardless of Purdue’s guards or Zach Edey, it would be nearly impossible to defend a team shooting that well from beyond the arc.

Whether or not Purdue will be at the mercy of a similar shooting performance in the NCAA tournament is entirely unpredictable. Regardless, their returning guards have generally made improvements since last season that suggest that Purdue is closer than ever before to avoiding postseason mistakes that are within their control.

Although it will likely take a trip to the Final Four to convince naysayers of Purdue’s standing as one of the nation’s premier college basketball programs, the Boilermakers are undeniably off to a historic start to the season, even including their loss to Nebraska. With all eyes on the nation’s top team, will Purdue’s guards be able to support Zach Edey in the NCAA Tournament? That question can’t be answered until March.