Purdue has earned lopsided edge at line, and Northwestern's Chris Collins should know that
People notice the fouls, when Purdue plays. I mean, people go looking for the fouls. They go looking for the free throws, too. This is a thing that happens every time Purdue plays, and it’s not fair – it’s not fair to Purdue, I’m saying – but it happened again Wednesday night at Mackey Arena, where Purdue avenged back-to-back losses to Northwestern with a 105-96 overtime victory that lasted so long, it wasn’t over even when it was over.
Because of the fouls, and the free throws. Northwestern coach Chris Collins apparently didn’t like what the numbers said:
Purdue was 29-for-46 from the foul line.
Northwestern was 6-for-8 from the foul line.
That’s not normal, and in the final seconds Collins was like all the armchair geniuses on Twitter, where people with reasonable intelligence go to lose their minds. In Collins’ case, he went onto the court at Mackey Arena to lose his mind.
His best player, the second-best player I’ve seen this season in the Big Ten – Boo Buie – had just missed a 3-pointer in the final second. Northwestern trailed 101-96 at the time, so the shot was immaterial. In, out, doesn’t matter. Purdue’s about to win.
But Chris Collins had spent 2½ hours watching the scoreboard, watching the fouls, watching the Boilermakers set up a welcome table at the foul line while his players needed directions to get there. Collins didn’t like it, and as Buie’s shot is bouncing off the rim he’s already on the floor, sticking his finger in an official’s face, cursing him, getting ejected from the game.
Now Collins is being held back by Northwestern’s Brooks Barnhizer, a local kid who played for his dad at Lafayette Jeff and has become a fabulous player for the Wildcats. Barnhizer had 14 points, three steals, two blocked shots and the assist of the game – pulling Collins away from officials, even as Collins was shouting, “I’m fine!”
No, he wasn’t. Collins had lost his damn mind, and I’m about to make him angrier. But I’ll do it out of love, because I know Chris Collins and I like Chris Collins, and he knows that. Know why? He was an assistant at Duke when I was covering the Blue Devils for the Charlotte Observer more than 20 years ago.
You know what this Purdue thing looks like? The way the Boilermakers enjoy a lopsided advantage at the foul line in game after game, while coaches complain and opposing fans whine? It looks exactly like Duke – when Collins was an assistant there. Duke got the same whistle then that Purdue is getting now, and I’ll tell you why:
Because like the free throw discrepancy Wednesday night – 46 to 8 – Duke wasn’t normal in those days.
And Purdue isn’t normal now.
Zach Edey throws normal out the window
You’ll have to pay attention, or I can’t help you. You’ll have to forget you root for whoever you root for, lose your tribal instinct to see conspiracy theories in favor of the Boilermakers, or you won't understand.
You’ll have to think for yourself, is my point, or you’ve got no chance to understand what Chris Collins should know – and, I suspect, will acknowledge when he calms down:
Zach Edey isn’t normal. The way Braden Smith attacks the rim isn’t normal. The way Lance Jones is faster than everyone else on the court? Not normal. It’s a lot like Duke back in the early 2000s, when they had Chris Collins on the bench next to Mike Krzyzewski, coaching Jay Williams and Carlos Boozer and Shane Battier and Mike Dunleavy. The Blue Devils were bigger, stronger, quicker and more explosive than everyone else. You know what happens to teams like that?
They get fouled all the time.
Same as Purdue.
If all you see is the numbers, well, you’ll never agree. Because the numbers look unfair. No question about it. Purdue shot 46 free throws to Northwestern’s eight? Purdue committed just 16 fouls, to Northwestern’s 31?
Look, I’ll give you this: Late in the game, the officials were making some terrible calls, calls I don’t think even they believed. But they were doing it when they called touch fouls against Purdue. Worst-kept secret in basketball: Officials pay attention to the scoreboard, too. Not the points, but the fouls. They know what the numbers say, and they get tired of the whining from one coach or another, so they notice which players have plenty of fouls to give, and when need be they call ticky-tack fouls on those players.
Don’t tell me this is a surprise to you. You’ve watched college basketball, right? You’ve watched the NBA too, correct? The problem with officiating ethics isn’t the poor calls they make early in the game. It’s the poor calls they make – the calls they invent – as the game goes along and they try to even up the fouls on the scoreboard.
So it happened to Purdue late in the second half, which still had several fouls to give just to put Northwestern into the bonus, while Northwestern had committed enough fouls (10, and then some) to get Purdue into the double-bonus. Yes, I realize what I’m saying: On the night Northwestern’s Chris Collins melted down, on the night the same thing was happening on Twitter – a great idea that has gone terribly wrong, kind of like PETA – I’m saying the victim of poor officiating, if there was a victim, was Purdue.
You think that’s ludicrous. Maybe you’re like this one particular guy on Twitter, a Fox Sports Radio host named … let’s see, Aaron Torres … who checks into Purdue games just to see the foul totals, and then goes to Twitter to preach to the choir.
Blind fools, all of ‘em.
Purdue, Northwestern play another classic
The ending, the controversy about the fouls, detracts from one of the best games of the season. Northwestern doesn’t exactly have Purdue’s number – the Wildcats lost Wednesday night, remember – but they’d beaten them the last two times they played, both at Evanston, Ill., both times when Purdue was No. 1. And they were doing it again Wednesday night.
Boo Buie is one reason. Ty Berry is another. They combined for 50 points on 13-for-20 shooting from 3-point range. Chris Collins is another reason. His teams are a reflection of him in the best of times: smart, unselfish, tough, composed.
What happened in the final second of this game wasn’t the best of times for Collins, and it sullied an amazing game. The individual performances of Buie and Berry were epic, as were the counter efforts Purdue’s Edey (30 points, 15 rebounds), Smith (11 points, 16 assists) and Jones (26 points). Mason Gillis added 14 points off the bench, including all four free throws in the final second after Collins’ ejection. Fletcher Loyer scored 15 points on just nine shots.
The Boilers shot 57.9% from the floor and were 10-for-21 on 3-pointers and Smith was playing the most brilliant floor game of his All-American season. Somehow Smith wasn’t one of 10 finalists announced earlier this week for Bob Cousy Award, given to the country’s top point guard, which is weird because Smith is the only point guard in the country – the only player in the country – averaging 12 points, five rebounds and seven assists. And he’s doing that while shooting 43% from 3-point range and holding a 3-to-1 ratio of assists to turnovers.
Snubbed?: Edey, Painter react to Smith being left off award list
More to the point: You know whose game Braden Smith looks like, with all that fancy ballhandling and no-look passing and sporadic but effective shooting? It looks like Bob Cousy.
Never mind that. Back to the foul issues, and the numbers, and here are some you need to understand: Purdue has made more free throws (397-for-554) than its opponents have attempted (217-for-313). That’s the holy grail of a free-throw edge, the kind of thing only the best teams enjoy.
Watch this:
One time, a highly ranked team made 604 free throws on the season while its opponent attempted just 527. One year later, that team made 567 free throws while its opponent attempted just 558. The team? Duke in 1993 and ’94. Chris Collins’ freshman and sophomore seasons.
Three decades later, here comes Purdue with the single most unstoppable offensive force since Shaquille O’Neal in the early 1990s, and before that Lew Alcindor at UCLA in the late 1960s. Teams can’t stop Edey without fouling him. He’s just too big, strong and agile. Factor the way Purdue leverages his presence into constant attacks on the rim, and that’s where the fouls happen. Similarly, Edey’s defensive presence near the rim scares teams out of the lane – again, where the fouls happen.
Doyel from 2020: No mold for player like Purdue freshman Zach Edey
Northwestern tried 27 shots from 3-point range, shot almost as many mid-range jumpers, and grabbed just three offensive rebounds. Hard to get fouled playing that way.
But believe what you want. It’s like my man Clark Griswold tells his wife Ellen during his epic meltdown late in the best movie of all-time, "Christmas Vacation:"
"Take a look around – we’re on the threshold of hell!"
That’s where we are as a country, and a world. You can’t tell people anything. They see numbers, and they see red, and then they melt down like Clark Griswold on the silver screen or Chris Collins at Mackey Arena. Say this for Collins, though: As he stalked off the court he still shook Purdue coach Matt Painter’s hand, and then made a beeline to Edey on the bench, congratulating the defending national Player of the Year on the kind of game that will earn him another such award this season, and the kind of game that produces a free-throw disparity like 46 to 8.
Afterward, Collins told reporters: “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a box score like that. I’ve never seen a disparity like that.”
Maybe he forgot what he’d told the Big Ten Network in an interview before this very game, noting he'd be playing all three of his big men against Zach Edey.
“We have 15 big fouls,” Collins said, “and we’re going to use them.”
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue beat Northwestern at foul line, and Chris Collins lost his mind
