Purdue vs. Oklahoma

A few weeks ago I had written a post about Purdue basketball and how good they should be this season. The regular season had not started yet but there had been a few pre season games that had already let them show their talent. Robbie Hummel and E’Twaun Moore have both been the leading scorers for the majority of games so far, just as predicted.

Before Friday night Purdue was 5-0, however on Friday Purdue had their first loss against Oklahoma. They put up a great fight against them, who were ranked number 11, but just couldn’t pull through in the end. "This stinks," Painter said. "We felt we had the game and it slipped out of our hands." There were many lead changes, ties throughout the game, and even an overtime- that just showed this game was a great match up.

From the Purdue side, there were quite a bit of fouls against us. In total there were 46 against Purdue and 5 against Oklahoma. In my opinion this had an impact on the game and the score. Although Oklahoma missed a lot of the free throws (especially in the beginning) it still gave them a number of free points compared to us. Whether this was a major factor in the end result, it is hard to say, but I feel that when you have two great teams like these and the free throws are that spread apart, there has to be something wrong with the refs’ calls.

"I talked to our guys afterward about how games are called. It's like injuries. You can't control it," Painter said.

E’Twaun Moore had another great game scoring a total of 22 points. Robbie Hummel also did a good job with only 10 points but a total of 9 rebounds. Hummel’s low scoring resulted from only being able to get in 24 minutes because of foul problems. As I mentioned before, there were a lot of them.

This was a really close game for both Purdue and Oklahoma which ended with a score of 87-82 (Oklahoma). It was a tough one for both of them with such strong teams. I don’t think this will have an impact on the way Purdue performs in the future. There are some tough teams we are scheduled to play soon, but I think that Purdue just proved that they could put up a good fight. I look forward to seeing Purdue vs. Duke at Purdue on December 2, 2008. The game starts at 9 PM ET. Let’s go Boilers!