Purdue turned in a gritty performance in its 70-65 quarterfinal win over Rutgers on Friday, moving on to the semifinals in search of its first Big Ten Tournament championshp since 2009.
Rutgers managed to keep Zach Edey from dominating but couldn’t stop the outside shooting of Mason Gillis, who scored 20 points on 7-of-8 shooting.
The top-seeded Boilermakers are looking for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, which could be in sight with the Big Ten Tournament title.
“Obviously you always want to win the tournament, you want to win every game you play,” Edey said after the win. “But we’re just focused on the next game. We’re just focused on Michigan State right now. I’m not going to worry about when the last time we won the tournament was.”
Michigan State was still playing 13th-seeded Ohio State in its quarterfinal game, so Edey was ignoring the tournament trend in which lower-seeded teams were winning.
Sure enough, the Buckeyes pulled off another shocker, beating the fourth-seeded Spartans 68-58 to advance to Saturday’s semifinals against the Boilermakers.
Time to change the focus, Zach.
Edey received a flagrant foul late in the game for getting involved in a scrum and knocking down Paul Mulcahy with an elbow. Some observers felt as though Mulcahy flopped after slight contact.
“They went to the monitor and said he hit him in the head,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “If they go to the monitor, he obviously must have (hit him). I don’t see them making it up. Can I take that back?”
Too late.
Edey told the Big Ten Network he just “wanted to step in and protect my guy” but conceded he should’ve walked away.
The Scarlet Knights knocked off then-No. 1 Purdue 65-64 in their only conference matchup, the second season in a row they beat the Boilermakers when they were the nation’s top-ranked team.
The underdogs won the first five games of the tournament before Maryland knocked off 14th-seeded Minnesota on Thursday night.
Exhaustion no big deal for Buckeyes
Despite playing for the third consecutive day, Ohio State kept rolling behind point guard Bruce Thornton, who led the Buckeyes with 21 points.
Michigan State closed large deficits multiple times but never could seem to stop the Buckeyes’ tempo. The Spartans shot 38.2% overall and 18.8% (3-for-16) from 3-point range.
Ohio State, which shot 44.6% overall and a blistering 52.6% (10-for-19) from behind the arc, became the first team in Big Ten Tournament history to make it from the first round to the semifinals, winning three games in three days.
“Where fatigue is overrated, excitement and energy is underrated,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said of the Buckeyes. “I’m trying to tell a couple of my guards that. Your body language, your emotion and energy makes a difference.
“Tyson Walker, I think he played hard all game. We had some other guys that didn’t play as hard. I don’t know why, but when (the Buckeyes) start making shots like that, things go your way.”
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Filling out a Big Ten Tournament bracket? Our picks after a ‘consistently insane’ regular season.
Tom Izzo backs Ohio State coach from media critic
Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann had one of the youngest teams in the Big Ten, but the Buckeyes managed to keep their heads up through a difficult season in conference play and the loss of freshman Brice Sensabaugh on Friday to knee soreness.
Izzo lambasted an Ohio State reporter who asked him earlier this season in Columbus about Holtmann’s future, suggesting he was in trouble.
“I give Chris a lot of credit,” Izzo said. “Everybody thinks he’s my uncle because I give him credit. He’s not. He’s just a human being that went through some tough times with injuries and people make stupid statements like, ‘He hasn’t been to the second round (of the NCAA Tournament) in four years.’ Well, one year nobody (from the Big Ten) went. So don’t make it look bad for him. It figures the (reporter) wouldn’t show up for this (tournament). If (Holtmann) hasn’t done a good job, I deserve to be fired because I didn’t do a very good job at all.”
Lack of credit for Purdue players bugs Matt Painter
Edey got all the postseason awards, including All-Big Ten first team. Painter was miffed that no one else was named to the squad, and what bugged him the most was the lack of attention given to them by Big Ten coaches.
“It’s a lot of (media) people’s opinion in there,” he said Friday. “And then with the coaches, you’ve got biased opinions. Like I’m a biased voter toward my guys, right? And rightfully so. Guys sacrifice for you. Guys play for you. But when you win a championship by three games, I would hope people can kind of open their eyes to it.
“I’m not asking you guys to open your eyes to it because you’ve never been in my position, but the people that have been in my position, they would like to be a Big Ten champion, and some of them have and some of them haven’t.”
Upsets have been the norm
Early returns in the Big Ten Tournament suggested everything was status quo. Which this season, of course, means nothing is going according to plan.
The lower seeds won the first four games for the first time in tournament history after No. 13 Ohio State knocked off No. 5 Iowa 73-69 on Thursday afternoon.
The back-and-forth game was tied eight times, saw 18 lead changes and came down to the final moments, with a mad scramble for the ball ending in the Buckeyes’ possession with 11.5 seconds left.
The Buckeyes inbounded the ball to Justice Suieng, who made two free throws to seal it.
“When it got to that loose ball that I had to dive on, I wasn’t too sure who had the tie-up,” said Sueing, who finished with 14 points. “So I threw it to Bruce (Thornton) to kind of get that going. Yeah, they had the time. It ended up working out.”
Ohio State clogged the lanes and came away with 10 steals and 14 points off turnovers. The Buckeyes will play No. 4 Michigan State in the second quarterfinal Friday.
On Wednesday, Ohio State nearly blew a 27-point lead in a win over No. 12 Wisconsin, and No. 14 seed Minnesota upset No. 11 Nebraska.
The Buckeyes were 3-15 in their last 18 games entering the tournament, while the Gophers finished in last in the Big Ten with a 2-17 record and came in with 12 losses in their last 13 games.
No matter. Both teams knew it was a second chance to prove they weren’t as bad as their record suggested.
“Just showing up each and every day,” Gophers forward Dawson Garcia said after the win. “We know we’re playing good basketball right now, so we know it’s not a fluke. So we’ll just continue to ride this wave that we’re on. I know for a fact nobody’s satisfied in the locker room.”
After No. 7 seed Illinois fell to No. 10 Penn State 79-76 in the first game of the evening session, No. 6 Maryland restored order by eliminating Minnesota 70-54.
Watch your cellphones, fans
Rutgers’ McConnell gave the media a warning after the Scarlet Knights knocked off Michigan 62-50 Thursday in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament:
Guard your phones.
According to McConnell, Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell is so anti-cellphone that he recently smashed his own in a team meeting with the players.
“Coach Pikiell hates the cellphones, man, he wants us to throw them away,” McConnell said. “If you have any cellphones in here and pull them out around him, he might smash yours.”
The problem with cellphones is obvious. They distract the players from the task at hand.
“He just wants us to focus,” McConnell said. “The cellphones have been a really big mental issue, and he wants us to stay positive. When you’re doing bad, everyone wants to bash you, keep you down. As soon as you’re doing good, and winning games, all of a sudden you’re the best team in America He just wants us to all stay focused and not worry about what other people are saying.”
Pikiell was reluctant to talk about the smashed phone, but called cellphones a “complete waste of time” and added he was proud of how Rutgers has fought through adversity.
“The phones don’t help you be better players.” he said. “They don’t help. That’s it.”
A drought unlike any other
Michigan went 14 minutes in the second half without a field goal, going 0-for-12 from the field between Hunter Dickinson’s three-pointers. Rutgers used that drought to run away with the game.
“It was a tough loss for this team, the coaching staff and also the university,” Michigan coach Juwan Howard said. “I’m proud of how our young men competed throughout the season. The adversity we’ve been through, I think we grew from. Trust me, we did. I wouldn’t want to be with any other group.”
The Wolverines were on the bubble for an NCAA Tournament bid before Thursday’s game, and those hopes obviously evaporated with an unwatchable second half. They hit a few shots in garbage time to go 4-for-21 in the half, a 19% field-goal percentage.
“We had a couple good looks, but the ball just didn’t fall in,” Dickinson said.
Free tickets for Northwestern students
Northwestern starts its Big Ten Tournament run Friday — and undergrads can see the action in person for free.
Student tickets will be distributed at the Norris University Center on Friday, with details emailed to students. The batch of hundreds of tickets was donated by the Ryan family, who have made wide investments to the university over the years, including the ongoing renovation efforts at Ryan Field.
Results and upcoming schedule
Wednesday
(13) Ohio State 65, (12) Wisconsin 57
(14) Minnesota 78, (11) Nebraska 75
Thursday
(9) Rutgers 62, (8) Michigan 50
(13) Ohio State 73, (5) Iowa 69
(10) Penn State 79, (7) Illinois 76
(6) Maryland 70, (14) Minnesota 54
Friday
(1) Purdue 70, (9) Rutgers 65
(13) Ohio State 68, (4) Michigan State 58
(10) Penn State 67, (2) Northwestern 65 (OT)
(3) Indiana 70, (6) Maryland 60
Saturday’s semifinals (CBS-2)
(1) Purdue vs. (13) Ohio State, noon
(10) Penn State vs. (3) Indiana, 2:30 p.m.
Sunday’s championship game (CBS-2)
2:30 p.m.
