It wasn’t that Purdue beating Baylor in its first-round NCAA tournament game Thursday that was so surprising — after all, the Boilermakers were a solid No. 6 seed in the West regional, the Bears a shaky No. 11 that had slipped in from off the bubble.
No, it was the final score that looked so out of place: 90-79.
For a while, one had to wonder if the Boilermakers were going to break 100. Purdue had scored more than 80 points just three times all season. This was less of a Big Ten-style postseason scrum and more like Suns vs. Lakers, relatively speaking. Which, considering Purdue’s last encounter with its conference, against Illinois in the Big Ten tournament, was not a bad thing.
Thus it was no wonder that after the track meet at the Verizon Center, guard Keaton Grant, who led five Purdue double-figure scorers with 17 points, said he expected little similar when the Boilermakers play their second-round game Saturday against Xavier.
“If it’s a good defensive team, we just have to grind it out with them,” Grant said. “That’s Big Ten basketball.”
This wasn’t. Purdue (25-8) didn’t exactly force the accelerated tempo, but it took full advantage of it from early on.
Baylor, a team that lives on the perimeter, couldn’t get shots to fall in the first half. When the Bears tried to push it inside, JaJuan Johnson and Scott Martin stopped them cold.
At the other end, the Bears couldn’t stop anybody. Purdue scored nine straight points, all on jumpers, in transition and off its own misses, to pull out to a 32-18 lead with eight minutes to go in the first half. Grant then scored the last eight points for Purdue as it scored a season-high 46 points for a 19-point halftime lead.
“If somebody wants to run up and down the court, we’ll run with them,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “If they want to play in the halfcourt, we’ll play with them. It was more fast-paced, and our guys did a good job of knowing when to go and when not to.”
The temptation was too strong not to go; even the players recognized early on that Baylor’s strength was not its defense.
“I really realized that in about the first two or three minutes of the game,” Grant said, “when I came down and no one was guarding me for about 10 seconds, and I realized I could hit some open shots.”
Unfortunately for Baylor, its best chance to throw a scare into Purdue was to play at that pace — and it couldn’t keep up. The Bears missed nine of their 11 first-half three-pointers, struggled badly on the offensive boards and got four of their shots blocked (Purdue blocked six in all, tying for their most ever in the NCAA tournament). Four of their more reliable outside threats and part of their guard-heavy rotation — Curtis Jerrells, Tweety Carter, LaceDarius Dunn and Aaron Bruce — shot 6 of 19 in the first half.
