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The Purdue basketball team came into their matchup with Ohio State on Tuesday night as big favorites. The Boilermakers are one of the best teams in the Big Ten, and they were at home against a Buckeyes team that is near the bottom of the conference standings. However, college basketball is a funny game, and Ohio State was the team that came out on top as they took down Matt Painter and Purdue 73-70.
Purdue led by 16 right before halftime in this one and it looked like it was going to be another easy win for the scorching hot Boilermakers. Ohio State orchestrated a furious comeback in the second half to get the upset win. Matt Painter will learn from this one.
“You know, you get on a win streak — we hadn't lost since Auburn — and you just want to move to the next game,” Painter said after the game, according to an article from Sports Illustrated. “And then when you lose — you've got to be able to look at some wins and kind of pick at yourself when you win. Because you always pick at yourself when you lose. If you really want to improve, you've got to really pick at yourself. So, that's what we try to do with our guys.”
Painter is always finding ways for his Purdue team to get better, and that's why he is one of the best coaches in the country. When they win, there is still work to do, and when they lose, there are still some positive takeaways.
“We're doing some really good things sometimes when we lose a game,” Painter said. “Keep that in perspective. We also have some struggles. We weren't perfect against Washington and Oregon, but yet we won the game. Don't look at it that way, try to make improvements from there.”
Painter wants his guys to learn from every game, and there is definitely a lot that they can learn from this gutting loss to Ohio State.
“That's what we've always tried to instill in our guys,” Painter added. “Let's learn, not just when we lose a game, let's learn when we win a game, but let's also look at some things from a pretty clean perspective.”
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On Tuesday, the biggest issue that Painter noticed was a lack of conversion. The Purdue basketball team was getting good opportunities to score, but they weren't taking advantage.
“In this game here, there are some good things that happened for us,” Painter said. “The ball was getting where we wanted it, we didn't convert a lot of times. We have to do a better job of converting. I thought from a process standpoint, we over-dribbled a little bit, got a little too deep sometimes, but the ball was getting in position for us to score, we just didn't convert enough.”
With the loss, Purdue falls to 15-5 overall on the year, and they dropped down to third place in the Big Ten as they are now 7-2 in conference play.
Ohio State needed that win as they are now 11-8 overall on the year and 3-5 in Big Ten play.
Michigan is the team just ahead of Purdue in the standings, and the Boilermakers will host the Wolverines on Friday night. The two teams will tip at 7:00 CT from Mackey Arena in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the game will be airing on Fox. The Boilermakers will be favored in that one as well.
