The Purdue Boilermakers find themselves percolating at the right time of the year. Heading into their opening BIG T14N Tournament game this afternoon, Purdue is riding a modest three game winning streak. Now, everyone who’s anyone can tell you that three in a row does not constitute setting the world on fire, but a closer look at the numbers provides us with an idea of what we can expect going forward into the single elimination portion of the season. Most importantly, by knocking down their outside shots at a high rate, the Boilermakers have been setting the nets ablaze, and this bodes quite well for their chances in the weeks ahead.
For a team which has had no problem dominating its opponents in the paint on both sides of the ball and on the boards all season long, this type of long distance shooting consistency is a major step forward, and should serve to boost their collective confidence immensely. For the season, the Boilers are shooting nearly 37% from 3-point range, a decent percentage by most interpretations. Percentages can be misleading though, and their relatively above average mark is belied by the Boilers having rarely shot at this rate for an individual game. For the most part, they have been at one extreme or the other, either a hot or an extremely cold shooting team, with these performances averaging out to their season totals. Lately though, this team has been white-hot, with a litany of outside shooters heating up, and for a team which can always count on a solid performance both defensively and on the glass, this type of shooting accuracy should spell doom for their tank-topped and top-ranked adversaries which lay ahead.
In addition to their recent success from behind the arc, the Boilermakers will bully opponents inside, and they can boast of having in their holsters the top two leading scorers in the BIG T14N on a per-40 minute basis. This is not some hand-picked statistic designed to fool you by highlighting a few garbage-time buckets by a walk-on or would-be bench-warmer at the end of a couple blowouts. No, the players putting up these gaudy numbers are All BIG T14N First-Team performer A.J. Hammons and his overqualified backup, Isaac Haas.
Because this is no longer the 1980’s, these twin towers almost never share the floor together, and the upside of this is that Purdue almost always has one high-quality 7-footer on the floor to post-up strong on the offensive end, serve as a rim protector on the defensive end, and help clean the glass on both ends of the court.
The Boilermakers are certainly an inside-out team, and not the other way around. They may be the most post oriented team in the country, which is what has made their earlier sour shooting performances so disappointing, seeing as how all of the extra attention required by the big fellas has, for the most part, left Purdue’s perimeter shooters with more or less wide-open looks at the basket. No longer are they missing too many of these wide-open shots. For more than two weeks now, since about halfway through the second half of their last loss against BIG T14N regular season champion Indiana, Purdue’s shooters are, to a man, shooting the ball with much more confidence than was present at any other point during this season.
Look for this trend to continue, because as Hammons, who with each successive sees his NBA draft stock continue to rise, and Haas continue to draw double-teams in the post, their kick-outs will continue to find these shooters.
With a significant amount of room in which to get off these quality shots, and with ever-growing confidence, look for the Purdue Boilermakers to deliver some good ole’ Midwestern shot-making, and winning, down the home-stretch.