The Boilermakers have a good case to be No. 1 when the selection committee reveals its top 16 seeds Saturday
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A 16.5-point favorite should never be down double-digits at home (or anywhere else, for that matter). So Thursday wasn’t as simple for Purdue as it should’ve been; even coach Matt Painter would tell you as much. Either way, let the record show that the Boilermakers eventually rallied to avoid what would’ve been a costly Q3 loss and extended their winning streak to nine games with an 84-76 victory over Minnesota.
“Our decision-making just wasn’t very good in the first half,” Painter said, “and our attention to detail on defense wasn’t very good.”
It got better, though.
After Purdue allowed Minnesota to make nine 3-pointers in the first half and shoot 47.1% from the field, the Gophers only sank three 3-pointers in the final 20 minutes while shooting 40.0% from the field. That was enough to allow Purdue to first erase a deficit and then pull away while the Boilermakers got 24 points and 15 rebounds from Zach Edey, the reigning CBS Sports National Player of the Year.
“I’ve watched him dominate games for four years now,” Painter said.
Purdue remains No. 1 in Friday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings — and I expect the selection committee to also make the Boilermakers No. 1 when it announces its top 16 seeds (heading into this weekend) during the NCAA March Madness Bracket Preview show that’s scheduled for Saturday afternoon at 12:30 ET on CBS. Could UConn instead be No. 1? Yes, UConn could obviously instead be No. 1. But, as I’ve explained many times over the past few weeks, regardless of how folks in the Associated Press Top 25 poll are voting, Purdue clearly has the sport’s best body of work.
The Boilermakers are 15-2 in the first two quadrants with nine Q1 wins and zero losses outside of Q1. UConn is 13-2 in the first two quadrants with eight Q1 wins and zero losses outside of Q1. So Purdue has more Q1 wins, more wins inside the first two quadrants and just better wins in general. (If you add the number of victories over teams ranked in the top 25 of the NET, Purdue has seven and UConn has three.) None of that necessarily means that Purdue is better than UConn; that’s debatable. But what’s not debatable is that Purdue currently has a better body of work than UConn, and that’s all the selection committee should care about when it unveils its top 16 seeds heading into Saturday’s games.
