Purdue powers its way into title game
There was more than one team that came to the Final Four with a dream — more than one team hoping to add its own unforgettable chapter to college basketball’s colorful history book.
Zach Edey and Purdue have been thinking big all year, and after snuffing out North Carolina State’s magical season with a 63-50 victory Saturday, it’s the Boilermakers who find themselves a win away from the program’s first NCAA title.
“It’s the one we’ve been talking about all year,” said Edey, the 7-foot-4 center who played all 40 minutes and finished with 20 points and 12 rebounds.
For the past three weeks, though, a lot of the country has been caught up in N.C. State. The Wolfpack, 11thseeded dreamers, were dialing up a classic reboot of 1983, when they won nine straight postseason games to capture an unlikely title that left their frenetic coach, Jim Valvano, running onto the court looking for someone to hug.
In 2024, the Wolfpack went 9 for 9 under similar must-win conditions to get this far.
Only this time, they came two wins short of glory.
“Didn’t get the big one,” said N.C. State guard DJ Horne, who finished with 20 points. “But it’s definitely a big accomplishment in my career.”
N.C. State aside, some might call this run by topseeded Purdue as inconceivable as anything in college hoops this year.
This is a program wellversed in the art of disappointment and missed expectations. Edey retuned for his senior season and led the Boilermakers to the Final Four for the first time since 1980 — one season after they became the second No. 1 seed to fall in the first round.
The Boilermakers (344), top-seeded again, will play Connecticut, an 8672 winner over Alabama in the second semifinal, for the title on Monday night.
“The reason I came back is for playing games like this,” Edey said. “It’s the reason I’m playing college basketball for four years, to finally get this game, big-time.”
N.C. State (26-15) poked and jabbed at Edey and gave him fits through the entire slugfest of a game. He still dominated the battle of big men against 6-9, 275-pound Wolfpack forward DJ Burns Jr., who labored to eight points and four assists.
Burns wasn’t the only one having trouble finding the basket. The N.C. State team that outscored Duke 55-37 after halftime in the Elite Eight — the team that had, in fact, outscored seven of nine opponents in the second half since its season became a win-or-go-home affair — shot 28.6% over the last 20 minutes this time.
It didn’t help that guard Michael O’connell pulled up lame with a bad left hamstring halfway through the first half. More than that, though, the Wolfpack had too many great looks at open shots that simply would not fall.
“The biggest difference is that some of the shots we normally make we didn’t make,” Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts said. “It kind of got away from us a little bit.”
It made for some ugly hoops. At one stretch early in the second half, the teams missed 10 straight shots between them.
“Obviously it was one of those grinder games,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said.
The shooting troubles cut both ways. Purdue’s second-leading scorer this season, Braden Smith, finished 1 for 9 for three points (but also had eight rebounds and six assists).