WEST LAFAYETTE - Purdue kept insisting the shots would come. After Friday night, the Boilermakers have a much harder case to make.
What started as a minor concern after a pair of exhibition wins has turned into a real problem for Matt Painter’s team, and the 83-80 double-overtime loss to Valparaiso at Mackey Arena only sharpened the issue. Purdue is now shooting 17.9% from 3-point range, a number that drops to 16.2% over the last three straight losses, including the UConn exhibition, and 20.4% across its two regular-season games.
That’s a long way from the 41%-plus Purdue posted from deep in its first two exhibitions.
The Boilermakers looked like a team with plenty of perimeter firepower early on, making 30 3-pointers in those first two tuneups. But the last three games have told a different story, and Painter didn’t try to soften it after the Valpo loss.
“It’s alarming because it’s not a game,” Painter said after the Valpo loss. “Sometimes if you have a game like this shooting the basketball you can look at it as an outlier. Three games in a row not shooting 3s well.”
That’s the heart of the issue now. Purdue isn’t dealing with a one-night cold spell. It’s dealing with a stretch.
Jack Benter tried to downplay the concern on Thursday, a day before the home opener, saying, “I don’t really feel like it’s that big of an issue,” Benter said. “I feel like we’re all really good shooters and eventually they’re going to fall. Just keep confident and just keep taking the good shots.”
CJ Cox sounded similar after the loss, though with a slight adjustment in tone. Cox, who shot 38.2% from 3-point range over the previous two seasons on 249 attempts, is just 1 of 8 from deep this season through two regular-season games.
“For us, if it’s a good shot, just continue to take it. It’s going to end up falling,” Cox said.
“Maybe if shots aren’t falling, look to attack the hoop a little bit more. But, if it is a wide open shot, just keep continuing to take it.”
Painter made clear Thursday that he’d rather live with quality attempts than settle for a bad mix. He said he’d take 100% good shots over 50% great shots and 50% poor shots.
The problem is that plenty of Purdue’s current looks are exactly the kind of shots a coach wants. They’re just not going down.
“Some guys struggling that are confident and that’s dangerous,” Painter said.
Against Valparaiso, Daniel Jacobsen again looked like Purdue’s best answer. Painter also said he wished he had gotten Jacobsen more touches against Gonzaga, even though the big man already had a fairly healthy usage rate in that game. On Friday, Jacobsen not only scored effectively, he also drew fouls and forced both Valparaiso centers out of the game.
His presence mattered in another way, too. With Jacobsen working inside, Purdue found more room to attack the basket. That showed up in the overtime periods, when the Boilermakers got layups and earned 14 free-throw attempts.
The question hanging over Purdue is whether it needed to get there sooner.
If the Boilermakers had stopped leaning so hard on the 3-point line earlier, maybe the game never reaches overtime in the first place. For now, Purdue is still being described as a good outside shooting team.
Maybe it is. But the numbers right now tell a different story, and if the Boilermakers keep taking 20-plus 3s a night without the results to match, Valparaiso probably won’t be the last team to take advantage.
In Other News...
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Purdues Latest Collapse Exposed A Bigger Problem For Barry Odom
Purdues 34-29 loss to Maryland landed with the kind of thud that lingers beyond a single Saturday, especially for a program trying to steady itself under Barry Odom. Afterward, Odom met with the media alongside Ryan Browne, Charles Correa and DNylon Morrisette, and the mood was unmistakably grim as the Boilermakers tried to sort through another game that slipped away in the margins.
What made this one sting was how familiar the problems sounded. Odom pointed to defensive breakdowns and situational mistakes as the difference, the sort of issues that can turn a competitive afternoon into a frustrating loss in a hurry. For Purdue, the bigger concern is not just the result itself but the pattern it suggests, with the staff now facing a harder question about how quickly those lapses can be cleaned up. [Read more 🡒]