Boilermakers Fall to Florida State in OT in Tourney Title Game
NICEVILLE, Fla. — Purdue struggled to score most of the night against Florida State's stifling defense, and when it got even worse in overtime, it was too much for the Boilermakers to overcome on Saturday night in the championship game of the Emerald Coast Tournament.
The Boilermakers lost 63-60 in overtime, falling to 4-3 on the season in what has been a brutal nonconference schedule. It doesn't get any easier, either, with defending national champion Virginia coming to West Lafayette on Wednesday for a matchup in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.
It was a back-and-forth game with 10 lead changes and 11 ties. Florida State, which has now won seven in a row after losing its season opener to Pitt, never led by more than four points while the Boilermakers briefly went ahead by seven early in the second half after trailing 27-24 at the intermission.
Purdue won the rebounding battle 48-33, but had 24 turnovers to only 13 for Florida State.
"When you have that many turnovers, it's hard to generalize because you have a lot of different ones," Purdue coach Matt Painter said after the loss. "They pressed us and come out and extend, and it made sense for us to be aggressive just to get into some 4-on-3, 3-on-2 situations, and that seemed to help us. We weren't very strong with the ball.
"Our guards would lose their dribble and just pick it up. We put ourselves in a couple of bad positions, losing our dribble and not being careful."
They also shot only 33.9 percent from the field, and just 20.8 percent from the 3-point line. Center Matt Haarms was the only guy who effective offensively. He was 6-for-6 shooting from the field, and led the team with 16 points. Do the math, though, and that means the rest of the team shot just 26.7 percent from the field.
Jahaad Proctor (12) and Eric Hunter, Jr. (10) were the only other Boilers in double figures.
Purdue did a great job of defending the 3-point line all night. Florida State was just 1-for-17 from distance.
“These are the types of games that we need this early in the season to have a clear understanding of what it’s like to play at the highest level,” Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton said. “Purdue’s a very good basketball team. They’re very well coached.”
Florida State gets Indiana next. They'll play their second Big Ten team in four nights Tuesday night in Bloomington as part of the Big Ten-ACC Challenge.
