Iowa at Purdue: Time, TV, Odds, Streaming, How to Watch

I am tired of the cliché of the "Must-win" game. From here on out, every game, minus probably the game at Indiana (because that is going to be a bitch to win) can likely be considered a "must-win". Let's just agree on that and move on.

The good news is that the rest of the Big Ten is wildly unpredictable. As we saw with Rutgers beating Wisconsin, anyone can beat anyone. We just need to be the team beating the other nine more times. Easier said than done, but we can definitely beat Iowa. Time to go into "One game at a time" mode.

So far Iowa has been good, but not great this season. They got a very nice win in the ACC-B1G challenge at North Carolina. They lost to perennially over-rated Texas and Syracuse in their early season tournament and dropped in-state games to Iowa State and Northern Iowa. In the Big Ten they have already swept Ohio State while beating Minnesota and Nebraska. Michigan State blew them out in Iowa City and Wisconsin absolutely destroyed them this week.

This is a case of a good, but not great team coming to West Lafayette. They don't have any horrible losses and the wins at UNC and OSU are excellent. Where Purdue is going to be in trouble is that Iowa has the size to compete with Isaac Haas and A.J. Hammons. It begins with the 7'1" Adam Woodbury, who is history's greatest monster according to Bucky's 5^th Quarter after poking Nigel Hayes and Frank Kaminsky in the eyes. It looks like he is going to play, much to the dismay of Dan Dakich, who wanted Woodbury suspended, de-frocked, deported, and possibly burned at the stake.

Woodbury only scored 6.8 points per game and grabs 5.8 rebounds, but he blocks almost two shots per game and opens up a lot of things for those around him. The 6'9" Aaron White averages 15.6 points and 6.8 rebounds as a more experience type of Vince Edwards player. White can shoot the three on occasion, but Iowa relies on the 6'8" Jarrod Uthoff for that. He is a 39% three-point shooter that is going to cause problems on the perimeter.

As if those guys were not a big enough problem, 6'10" Gabriel Olaseni averages 8.4 points and 4.8 rebounds as the reserve to Woodbury. Woodbury and Olaseni can switch interchangeably like Hammons and Haas. Because of that, the size of White and Uthoff are going to cause us trouble. Point guard Mike Gesell can get them all the ball at 3.6 assists per game and Peter Jok is an effective shooter.

Iowa is a different type of team than we're used to facing. They are not a good three-point shooting team at only 31%, but they are an excellent rebounding team, especially on the offensive glass. This is a major concern after Purdue struggled to keep a poor rebounding team off the offensive glass on Wednesday. It doesn't matter that they shoot 42% from the field as a team. They can sit there and rebound their misses all day because of their size and score on putbacks.

This is also going to test Purdue offensively. Purdue couldn't get the ball in to Hass/Hammons against Illinois when it had a major size mismatch. Iowa has the size to neutralize those two and make Purdue try to beat them from the perimeter. Since we're completely awful at doing that and totally reluctant to attack the basket and get to the foul line I don't know how we're going to score at all.

Purdue is going to have to find a way to score points and get to the line in this one. The Illinois game was disappointing because of turnovers and an inability to attack a team's weakness. Iowa is at full strength and a lot better than Illinois.