Men's Basketball
Buckeyes Crumble in Humbling Loss at West Lafayette
By John PorentasOSU sophomore forward Evan Turner showed a lot of moxie after Purdue's 75-50 thrashing Ohio State (18-9, 8-8 Big Ten) at Mackey Arena. He showed up after the game and answered questions from a group of reporters who made the trip over to West Lafayette. That took some toughness, something that, according to Turner, OSU Head Coach Thad Matta told his team they were missing.
"We've got to be tough. He said he brought boys into a man's fight,' Turner said.
Turner himself was not among the unmanly. He scored a team-high 14 points despite the fact the Boilermakers (22-7, 11-5 Big Ten) made him the focus of their defense after Turner lit up the Boilermakers for 26 points, seven assists and 12 rebounds in OSU's 80-72 win earlier this month. This time around the Boilers found a way to control Turner.
"What they did to us up there was have Evan Turner come off ball screens and play and create," said Purdue forward Chris Kramer.
"We let him turn off the ball screen in Columbus. He just tore us apart scoring and passing.
"Today we just tried to make him use the ball screen and have our big guy come out there and hedge, make him pass it or let our guard get back underneath him and square him up and play one on one again.
"When he comes off that ball screen he really doesn't want to pass it. He's waiting for our hedge to go back to his man and he's going right back down and attack, so when we stayed up there with the hedge it really took him out of some things."
Turner was hounded whenever he had the ball near the top of the key and ended up turning the ball over five times while collecting just two assists and four rebounds.
With Turner neutralized the Buckeyes desperately needed someone else to step up and pick up the slack. Jon Diebler tried, firing up 12 three point attempts. The problem for the Buckeyes was that he missed the first nine.
"I thought he had some clean looks at the basket that he's been knocking down," said OSU Head Coach Thad Matta.
"Obviously that's something that we need Jon to do but it was one of those games where they just didn't go down for him."
That was a major relief for Purdue Head Coach Matt Painter.
"He just missed them. At times we were leaving him and I don't know why. We want to stay with Jon Diebler because we respect the way he can shoot the basketball," said Painter.
"We were fortunate that he kind of missed a couple to start the game."
Adding to OSU's woes was a three of eight shooting performance by William Buford. With the Boilers taking away Turner, the Buckeyes had little hope without help from Diebler and Buford on the offensive end.
"Those are our two other main scorers," said Turner.
"It's tough to win when they're not making shots but still our defense wasn't there today. You can't just rely on the offensive end. We won games off defense prior to this game."
The Buckeyes trailed by double-digits for most of the first half but a late six-point run to end the half cut Purdue's 12 point lead to just six at the buzzer. The Buckeyes opened the second half with two baskets from B. J. Mullens to cut the lead to two, then the roof fell in.
"We cut it to two and from there Purdue kept playing and we didn't keep playing," said Matta.
A rash of turnovers coupled with some torrid shooting by the Boilermakers resulted in a half that saw Purdue outscore OSU 43-24. The Boilers knocked down seven of nine three pointers in the second half after making just two of ten in the first half. The hot long-range shooting made minced meat of OSU's zone defense.
"Our offense did a good job of getting open shots," said Boilermaker forward Robbie Hummel.
"We were able to knock them down which is really big against a zone.
"If you're not making shots it's going to be real hard to take it to the basket. When they are going in you can spread them out and have those lanes to drive. It opened up a lot of stuff for us."
"They were picking apart our zone," said Turner.
Matta eventually came out of the zone and the Buckeyes finished the last seven minutes of the game in a man to man defense. It didn't matter, the Boilers kept scoring.
"We could have played any defense today in the last 15 minutes, it wasn't going to matter," said Matta.
OSU simply had no answer for the Boilermakers, and that is what had Matta and Turner worried after the game.
"For whatever reason we didn't have that poise that we needed today," said Matta.
"This team, in the games that we've played well everybody has had a hand in it and everybody is kind of doing their part. Today we just didn't get it.
I told those guys early on (in the season) maybe something like this (can happen), but it's hard to take late in the season.
"We were stuck in mud there a lot today."
Said Turner, "We have to go home and look at ourselves in he mirror.
"Basketball is a game of runs. We had to draw a line which we didn't."
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