Purdue goes cold in
loss to Spartans
First-half run helps Michigan
State win
By Paul Trembacki
Sports
Editor
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The thing about championship-caliber
teams is that they put opponents away and they put them away early.
The No. 5 Michigan State Spartans did just that,
using a 23-0 first-half run to separate from Purdue en route to a 72-55
win over the Boilermakers Sunday afternoon in the Breslin Center.
Purdue coach Gene Keady, who after the game joked
that for $50 he would give the defending national champion Spartans
(18-2, 7-2 Big Ten) a first-place vote in the coaches' poll, said Michigan
State's hot streak and Purdue's poor shooting were the keys to the game.
"Their defense forces you to shoot the ball quick,"
Keady said. "With a good rebounding team like that it just gives you
trouble."
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo agreed that his team's
spurt, which went from the 8:28 to the 1:18 mark of the first half and
turned a tight game into a blowout, was the deciding factor.
"I think if it weren't for that seven-minute stretch
this game would have gone right down to the wire," Izzo said.
But instead the game was over early as Purdue (13-7,
5-4) never got closer than 17 points away. And Izzo, who usually paces
the sidelines yelling fanatically, instead spent most of the second
half Sunday slumping in his chair, legs folded and arms crossed.
Izzo watched his team win at home for the 41st
time in a row. Their last home loss was a 99-96 overtime loss to Purdue
March 1, 1998.
"Purdue's a very, very good team," Izzo said. "On
this given day they just did not shoot the ball as well."
The Boilermakers, who came in shooting 46.9 percent,
missed all eight of their shots and committed three fouls and two turnovers
during the funk.
For the game, Purdue shot 28.3 percent from the
field, a season low.
And that included Willie Deane's 6-of-12 performance,
which included a 6-for-8 (75 percent) from 3-point range.
Without Deane, Purdue was a combined 11 for 48
(22.9 percent) from the field and 4-for-16 (25 percent) from beyond
the arc.
"I saw that a couple other players on the team
weren't hitting the shots that they usually hit so we needed offense
and I just tried to step up and be that offensive threat," Deane said.
Deane was the lone standout for Purdue. The sophomore
guard came off the bench and finished with a game-high 20 points and
a team-high five rebounds. But he said he'd rather win than score 20
points.
"I'm more of a team player than anything," he said.
"When we win I'm happy regardless of how I played, but when we lose,
man, no matter how many points I scored, it doesn't matter — we
lost."
Deane hit consecutive treys as Purdue took a 13-12
lead with 11:17 to play.
After a breakaway layup by Carson Cunningham which
gave Purdue a 15-14 lead with 8:28 left in the first half, Michigan
State went on its run, connecting on 8 of 10 shots to put the game out
of reach.
"Purdue played right with us and I think if you
look at other than that spurt … it was a pretty even game," Izzo
said.
The rebounding game, however, was anything but
even, as the conference's top rebounding team outrebounded Purdue 53-29.
During their spurt, the Spartans outrebounded Purdue 10-0.
Also, the shooting percentage the Spartans allowed
was the ninth-lowest for the team in the Izzo era. Offensively, Michigan
State shot 44.6 percent including 23 second chance points.
"They're a good team — a great team," said
forward Kenneth Lowe, who scored six points on 1-of-5 shooting.
After the game, Deane was already looking forward
to the week ahead.
"We're just going to learn from this and get ready
for Wisconsin," Deane said.
The Boilers play the Badgers (14-5, 5-3) Wednesday
at 8 p.m. in Madison, Wisc.
"We're not going to get our daubers down; we're
going to try go up there and win," Keady said. "If we play like we did
another 10-minute stretch then we'll get beat again, so we can't do
that."
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