The Purdue Boilermakers grabbed their third win of the B1G season as they defeated the Northwestern Wildcats 79-61. The Boilers looked like a different team defensively against Northwestern that featured two of the top three scorers in the B1G in Nick Martinelli and Brooks Barnhizer. The pair, that has been averaging 20.1 points a piece throughout the season scored just 10 and 11 points, respectively. The pair also accounted for 10 turnovers, 8 by Barnhizer.
It was a game that started off with a Boilermaker defensive focus that frustrated the Wildcats into turnovers and poor shooting decisions often settling for contested mid-range jumpers. Purdue ended up only giving up .924 points per possession while Northwestern shot just 38.3% from the field and had a total of 13 turnovers. It was a surprising effort considering the types of games that had become common place between the two programs where the Wildcats often established the physicality and made Purdue feel wholly uncomfortable. Today, that simply wasn’t the case.
Braden Smith was again performing as most expected him as the preseason B1G Player of the Year as he scored 22 points, had 6 rebounds, and connected on 7 assists. More than that, Smith was operating more smoothly from the point guard position and putting the entire offense on a path of efficiency where the Boilers scored 1.254 points per possession. He often found Kaufman-Renn on the short roll off the high ball screen that led to hockey-like assists when TKR found Furst and Colvin for shots. He even found Burgess for an alley-oop slam when he simply took his defender off the dribble. His 7 assists today place him second all time in program history behind only Bruce Parkinson…