Purdue Boilermakers After Eliminating Villanova: “We Want More Than Sweet 16”

What the majority knew in advance, but didn’t want to speak about it, happened last night. The reigning champions, Villanova Wildcats got eliminated at the early stage of NCAA March Madness.

Purdue Boilermakers demolished the, already former, champs with a 26-point win, 87-61.

Besides that, the story of the night is Purdue’s junior guard Carsen Edwards who dropped 42 points on Wildcats defense, splashing from all the positions and harassing his defenders.

This was a career-high for this young fella.

“Just had some shots fall first,” Edwards said right after the game. His 42 buckets came with 12 of 21 shooting from the field, from which 9 hits came behind the three-point line. Also, not to forget, he was perfect from the free-throw line 9 of 9. And he played 39 minutes.

According to this guy, the key in his whole performance was a good defense which made it possible for him to be confident on the offensive side of the court and to have some easy points.

“We played well on the defensive end. We was able to get some stops and get some good looks early and continue to make shots down the stretch.”

He also set a new record for three-pointers made at XL Center in Hartford. The 21-year old buried 9 of them, while the previous record stood at 8. The guy who made that was Ray Allen.

“That’s crazy,” the surprised youngster said.

Edwards had huge help from the 7-3 center from the Netherlands, Matt Haarms who posted 18 points and 9 boards, and Ryan Cline who made four threes for his 12 points.

“We didn’t get up on Edwards early, didn’t get up on Cline early, and when great shooters get hot, you’re in trouble,” commented ‘Nova’s coach Jay Wright.

In general, the No.3 seed had a superb percentage from downtown, hitting 16 of their 30 attempts, 53.3%.

“Our main focus was just being able to contain the dribble,” said the star of the game, ” and then limiting them to one chance at getting the rebound.”

And they sure did. But not only that, Purdue totally outrebounded Villanova, 42-24.

Everything was clear about the final outcome already at the end of the first halftime, when Boilermakers led 43-24.

Throughout the whole contest, Villanova only once led, 5-4 at the start, and that was the only time they weren’t behind. They allowed the opponent to close the first halftime with a 16-4 run, which happened in the last 7:46. So the champs scored only four points during that stretch, and that shows the efficiency Purdue’s defense.

Again, there is more. Villanova couldn’t score in the first 5:55 minutes of the second part of the game, and in those moments trailed 59-24. Such a horrific situation hadn’t been seen in a long time by one Wildcat fan.

For the third straight time, the Boilermakers are in the Sweet 16, and now they want to go one step further. Matt Painter made a good team, who has the ability to hurt opponents on both sides of the court, and this season might be the one when Purdue makes a huge noise in the tournament.

Coach himself stated that he wouldn’t settle just for Sweet 16 and declared that as some kind of a big success.

“You know you’re greedy as a coach,” he said. “You look at it like you didn’t advance further; you should have played better in conference play. We’re excited about going to the Sweet 16, but we want to do better.”

His team will have a challenging task in the next stage. They will face either Iowa or Tennessee. From this perspective, it appears that the Volunteers have much bigger chances of coming out as a winner from that matchup, but March Madness taught us that nothing comes safe while it lasts.

That game is set for next Thursday, and the venue is KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky.