Purdue crushed Illinois with the nine-ball Wednesday night. But the No. 22 Illini also were forced to admit the obvious: They sank themselves again with their lack of poise down the stretch.
Continuing a disturbingly risky trend, redshirt freshman point guard Frank Williams missed his third game-ending three-point attempt in four tries this season, sealing a 69-66 Purdue win at the Assembly Hall.
When his shot from behind the arc hit the front of the rim with two seconds left, Illinois (9-5, 1-2) dropped its ninth straight game to the Boilermakers (10-5, 1-1). Lon Kruger’s club, though, had shown its youth long before that, blowing a seven-point lead with 9:05 remaining.
“We’re not as good as we want to be or as good as we need to be,” Kruger said, “and that’s my responsibility. We do it in spurts, we do it times but that’s not enough.”
The Illini were undone by their inability to stop their same old nemesis–senior power forward Brian Cardinal of Tolono, Ill, and senior small forward Mike Robinson of Peoria. Cardinal had a game-high 21 points. He also grabbed six rebounds and was 7 of 7 at the foul line to improve to 8-0 against his native state..
“Being able to go 8-0 against them is amazing,” said Cardinal. “Illinois is an amazing program. When Coach [Lou] Henson was here they were tough and Coach Kruger has made them even tougher. It’s a tribute to our team and our senior leadership that we’re undefeated against them.”
For all of Cardinal’s heroics, however, it was Robinson who dug the dagger in the deepest, scoring 11 of his 12 points in the second half, most of them on tipins and putbacks. Robinson muscled his way to a game-high 12 rebounds, including nine on the offensive end.
“He [Robinson] is as good a rebounder as anyone in the league,” said Kruger. “He deserves credit, but we’ve got to do a better job locating him.”
Robinson began to vanish from Illinois’ defensive radar with 6:53 remaining in the game. The Illini had taken their biggest lead of the game–55-48–at the 9:05 mark with a 7-0 run, but Robinson’s putback closed the gap to 57-55. When he drove in for a layup 1:40 later, the Boilermakers regained the advantage 61-59. A tip-in, two free throws and a layup by Robinson put Purdue in front 67-62 with 2:45 remaining.
Led by Robinson, the Boilermakers’ 43-29 rebounding advantage–19-6 on the offensive end–was also critical. “They were just quicker to the ball,” Kruger said.
Illinois closed to within 67-66 on back-to-back jumpers by Williams and Cory Bradford, but Bradford missed a three-pointer with :40 to go. And when Sergio McClain was called for a reach-in foul with :26 left, Carson Cunningham (13 points) made two free throws that iced it.
The Illini struggled, though, without Purdue’s help. Junior center Marcus Griffin sat out the first 10 minutes, serving a disciplinary benching for being late for a pregame meeting. Griffin had 10 points at half and took only one more shot, which he missed.
“This is very frustrating,” said Bradford of Purdue’s 9-0 blitz. “We had the thing under control tonight but they made a run and we didn’t respond. I’m just tired of losing.”
After watching his team drop its second Big Ten game in a row in the closing moments–Wisconsin rallied from a 15-point halftime deficit Saturday–Kruger clearly hopes that’s the case.
