CHICAGO — Braden Smith made it almost all the way to the other end of the court, yelling and jumping and pounding the chest of a nameless No. 41 jersey, playing to a Purdue-heavy crowd that lapped up every second. Whatever Purdue had lost over the course of the season, whatever the Boilermakers were missing, it was all back, personified by the strut of their bearded imp of a point guard. Swagger. Belief. Classic Purdue basketball. And not a moment too soon.
Smith, who earlier ripped his usual No. 3 jersey “Superman style” out of frustration, had been fouled making a layup and made the ensuing free throw to put Purdue up 13 with 12 minutes to play, turning a Big Ten championship game that had felt like a foregone conclusion — Michigan’s final moment of dominance at the end of a remarkable season — into a celebration of Purdue’s unexpected but unquestionably timely renaissance. Right down to the shirt on its star’s back.
“I think for us it doesn’t matter what number is in front of our name,” Smith said following Purdue’s 80-72 victory. “We know what we’re capable of because we have a lot of good pieces on our team. Obviously you have an older core who has been in a lot of different games.”
Michigan’s No. 1 seed may have been inked into the bracket before it ever took the court Sunday, but Purdue had no interest in a conference coronation. There was a time not all that long ago when the Boilermakers would have looked upon a top seed, never mind their presence in this championship game, as their destiny. They got to the championship by a different route, but ended up with the trophy just the same, entering as the No. 7 seed but first at the finish.
The AP preseason No. 1, a tidy 17-1 in mid-January before stumbling to the finish, Purdue seemed to recapture its mojo in Chicago with easy wins over Northwestern and a pair of NCAA-bound teams in Nebraska and UCLA before outmuscling Michigan to claim its third Big Ten Tournament title with a fourth win in four days.
“It’s a great sign,” coach Matt Painter said. “There’s a lot of teams — and we’ve been one of those teams before — that have just played great and then all of a sudden get into tourney time and not play as well. It’s a little bit of a mix, like you’ve got to keep working towards getting better. So the fact that we’ve been able to put together four games in four days, that’s tough to do, especially when you go up against the talent and the size and the athleticism that Michigan has.”
This wasn’t the same Purdue team that lost at home to Michigan by double digits in February. This wasn’t the same team that lost four of six coming into this tournament. This was the team Purdue was supposed to be all along. So they got a No. 2 seed — playing Queens in the first round in St. Louis on Friday — instead of a No. 1. The Boilermakers still ended up champions.
Purdue getting back to being Purdue might have been less shocking than the final act of how that played out. Literally no one had done this to Michigan. The Wolverines may have had mixed results in close games, but their two previous losses were by four and three points, to Wisconsin and Duke, respectively. An outcome like this started to feel possible when Michigan needed late, high-leverage plays to get past Ohio State and Wisconsin in Chicago, wobbling at the end of a season of dominance.
Michigan developed a habit of winning big, of cruising through games even against good teams, of rarely being tested. Whether the gap closing is a sign of weakness on the part of the Wolverines — clearly missing injured guard L.J. Cason — or the object lesson in playing in tight games they had not given themselves the opportunity to absorb is a question for the next few weeks as the Wolverines, the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region, try to get back to Chicago starting against the UMBC-Howard winner on Thursday in Buffalo.
But learning how to win close games doesn’t help you when the closest you can get is five in the final four minutes, as was the case Sunday. Because while the Wolverines were going through their remedial coursework, Purdue was quietly getting back to where it started the season. A few good wins in sequence. The familiar physical edge. The return of some good vibes. A lot of made shots. All of which set the stage for Sunday, when the Boilermakers’ moment arrived.
Unfazed by Michigan’s size, Purdue pounded the ball inside when it wasn’t pounding the Wolverines directly, going right at Aday Mara, while Smith was at his playmaking best. The Boilermakers led by as many as 14 in the second half before Michigan finally mustered a response, but it wasn’t enough.
Smith recorded a staggering 46 assists in the four wins to bring him to 1,075 at Purdue, one short of Bobby Hurley’s NCAA record. Trey Kaufman-Renn, Oscar Cluff and Fletcher Loyer all scored in double figures in each of the four games. They won by 13, 16, seven and finally eight. Their big men shoved Michigan’s around, Cluff dancing with foul trouble but still knocking Yaxel Lendeborg to the floor with a forearm at one point, Kaufman-Renn picking his spots in the paint to score 12 of his game-high 20 in the second half. Purdue had 21 assists and two turnovers Sunday. The execution was impeccable.
“It looked like they really found something deep inside,” Michigan coach Dusty May said. “When you start the year preseason No. 1, you have two first-team All-Americans, and it doesn’t go as planned and you come in as a No. 7 seed with your back against the wall and perform the way they did, it’s impressive.”
This is how Purdue drew it up, how it worked to start the season, how it so often works at Purdue under Painter, and what the Boilermakers once were and became again at their rediscovered best.
“We’re not here and celebrating this tournament championship if we didn’t play better defense the last four days,” Painter said. “We had some moments in the regular season where really good people beat us and we played great offensively, we just had to be better on the defensive end. I thought in this tournament we were much better on the defensive end. That’s something that hopefully can help us in the NCAA Tournament.”
The Boilermakers may not have earned the No. 1 seed they thought would be theirs, but just as Michigan could look back on a weekend when it thrived in unfamiliar situations, Purdue seemed to find a pathway back to being the team it used to be. A championship is almost secondary to that. Maybe the Boilermakers are who we thought they were, after all.
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