Purdue’s run ends in title game with 75-60 loss to UConn
INDIANAPOLIS – The Connecticut Huskies beat the Purdue Boilermakers in the NCAA national championship game, 75-60, on Monday night at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Playing in the final game for the first time since 1969, Purdue couldn’t deliver the school’s first NCAA men’s basketball championship, while UConn became the first repeat champion since the Florida Gators in 2006-07.
“It hurts because these opportunities are slim,” Purdue head coach Matt Painter said. “It’s a lot different than last year when you put yourself in a great position and you don’t take advantage of it. We put ourselves in a great position now and we took advantage of it, we just came up a little bit short to a great team.”
National player of the year Zach Edey started strong, scoring 16 of the Boilermakers’ first 25 points as the two teams exchanged the lead throughout the first 13 minutes of the game.
Purdue took a 23-21 lead on an Edey jumper, with eight minutes to go in the half before the Huskies went on an 11-2 run to take a 32-25 advantage.
Braden Smith hit back-to-back jumpers, including the Boilers’ only three-pointer of the game to rally within two points, but UConn scored the last two baskets of the first half to go to the locker room up, 36-30.
The Huskies took control in the opening minutes of the second half as Edey and Purdue went cold, going scoreless for over 10 minutes of game clock.
Back-to-back alley-oop dunks from Tristan Newton to Samson Johnson put UConn up 47-34 five minutes into the second.
The Huskies then started to put the game out of reach with a Stephon Castle three-pointer to make it 59-42 with just under nine minutes to play in the game.
“They did a good job of showing and mixing up some defenses, playing some one-on-one,” said Edey. “This is one of those games where I can’t go through stretches where I’m not effective. I had a few of those stretches today and that was the game.”
Newton paced the Huskies with 20 points, while Castle and Spencer contributed 15 and 11 points respectively. Edey led the Boilermakers with 37 points and 10 rebounds. Smith added 12 points and eight assists.
Sophomore guard Fletcher Loyer was held scoreless, while grad transfer Lance Jones was limited to five points.
The Boilers shot just 1-of-7 from three-point range, while only getting two points off their bench, a vicious putback dunk by Cam Heide.
“They just did a really good job of guarding the three,” Smith said. “We got in the paint plenty of times, we just didn’t convert on a lot of them. I thought we did our job pretty well and they also did their job pretty well, guarding the three, but we just have to convert on those in the paint.”
The loss brings an to end the career of Edey, one of the most decorated players in Purdue history. He leaves as the program’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder.
“You can say whatever you want about me, but you can never say I didn’t give it 100 percent every single time I stepped on the floor,” said Edey. “That’s what I’ll hang my hat on. I came in and I never didn’t give it 100 percent.”
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