Michigan State had blueprint to beat Purdue; who else can follow it?
EAST LANSING, Mich. – The walls aren’t exactly closing in on Purdue, but around the Big Ten the word is definitely out: Make enormous center Isaac Haas beat you. It won’t work every time, obviously. Hell, it might not work again. Haas is sensational and so is Purdue, a team Michigan State coach Tom Izzo calls “a Final Four team.”
But it worked on Saturday, when Izzo defended Haas withone player, hoping to keep Purdue’s perimeter marksmen from delivering an onslaught of threepointers. Haas scored 25 points in 27 minutes, but the strategy worked: Purdue hit six three-pointers as No. 4 Michigan State beat the No. 3 Boilermakers in a low-scoring slugfest 68-65.
The winning shot was Miles Bridges’ three-pointer with 2.6 seconds left, but the winning strategy was Izzo’s decision to copy what Michigan tried in two narrow losses to Purdue and what Ohio State, Maryland and Indiana have done quite a bit as well recently: Devote one body to Haas, let him get what he can, and refuse to leave Purdue’s three-point shooters alone at the arc.
The crowd wasn’t having it. The Breslin Center was groaning as Haas repeatedly caught the ball within 8 feet of the basket and went to work on Gavin Schilling. At 6-9 and 240 pounds, Schilling looks like a bodybuilder — but standing behind the 7-2, 295-pound Haas, he looked overmatched.
“Give our fans credit,” Izzo said. “A couple times I heard moans: ‘What are you doing, you knucklehead?’ I looked at my staff: What are we doing?”
Winning, but not easily. Nobody’s going to beat Purdue easily, and again, it’s entirely possible nobody will beat Purdue again. Defending Haas with one player requires depth at center to avoid foul trouble, an issue helped by a friendly whistle. Haas attempted a careerhigh 22 field goals but a season-low one free throw Saturday, some odd math, but the Spartans have the bodies and they have the toughness and the skill to capitalize on such a strategy. Michigan tried it twice and lost. Maryland and Indiana tried it for large stretches and also lost.
But these games are getting closer. The walls aren’t closing in on Purdue, not exactly, but its comfort level is gone. The Boilermakers won their first eight league games by an average 17.3 points. They were blowing teams out while getting a modest 13.4 points per game from Haas but drilling 11.4 shots from threepoint range.
In Purdue’s past six games, teams have mostly if not completely given Haas what he wants in the post while making the three-point arc their priority. And look what’s happened: Purdue has blown out nobody, winning four times by an average 5.3 points, and losing twice (to heavyweights Ohio State on Wednesday and Michigan State on Saturday). In those six games Haas has poured in 20 points per game, but the Boilermakers have averaged 7.3 made three-pointers.
The math, it’s not so hard to understand.
“Those were two points,” Izzo said of Haas’ field goals, “and sometimes the other is three points.”
For whatever reason, Purdue has cooled down from the perimeter. After hitting a scorching 47.2% on threepointers through eight league games (91-for-193), the Boilermakers are down to 36.7% in the last six (44-for-120).
The scores speak for themselves. Gone are Big Ten blowouts of 34, 31, 28 and 27 points. Now when Purdue wins it’s by eight, seven, four and two points. Plus two losses, though let’s be clear: Ohio State and Michigan State are the league’s best two teams, along with Purdue. Losing to them isn’t a catastrophe, but the Boilermakers’ cool-down from three-point range is problematic. What Purdue does better than anyone in America is score from all over the court. Nobody has the Boilermakers’ combination of size (two 7-footers) and perimeter shooting, but Purdue’s perimeter shooting for six games has been pedestrian. Its 36.7% accuracy rate in these six games would rank sixth in the 14team Big Ten.
Matt Painter would love to see his guys hit a few more shots, of course, but says he’ll keep going to Haas.
“They made a decision,” Painter said of the Spartans’ refusal to double-cover Haas. “That’s something we had to roll with. They made the decision what to give us — we have to take what they give us.”
Haas took, but Carsen Edwards (14 points) was the only other Boilermaker in double figures, and he needed 15 shots to get here. The rest of the starting five — Vincent Edwards (eight points), Dakota Mathias (eight) and P.J. Thompson (three) — combined for 19 points, well below their season average (33.8 points total) entering the game.
After this game, a showcase of two potential Final Four teams that came down to the final seconds, Painter didn’t sound concerned.
“This is one of those outlier-type games,” he said. “They made a conscious decision to play (Haas) one-onone. If you’re going to play him one-onone, we’re going to throw him the ball.”
Izzo called Purdue “the best team we’ve played” and conceded he wasn’t sure before the game if his team was good enough to win. Afterward, he didn’t sound all that convinced it could happen again, especially given that another meeting would take place on a neutral court in the Big Ten or NCAA tournament.
“No question our crowd was an advantage,” Izzo said. “Remember I said this to you: That team is a Final Four team. I don’t want to put any pressure on them.”
Pressure isn’t the problem: Purdue starts four seniors plus fearless sophomore Carsen Edwards. The problem is the blueprint: Michigan State was the latest team to draw up the plan, and the first to follow it for 40 minutes and have it pay off, and you can believe this: More teams will follow that trail. Perhaps not some of the overmatched Big Ten teams remaining on Purdue’s schedule, but for sure the heavyweights the Boilermakers will have to defeat to make a deep March run. Those teams will make like Michigan State and give the Boilermakers two points to deny them three.
Purdue has seen the future. Does it accept the math?