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

Right now, Purdue is one of the hottest teams in all of college basketball. The Boilers have overcome losses to Gardner Webb and North Florida to claw back into NCAA Tournament consideration. It was a dream that was dead After Gardner-Webb beat Purdue on December 22. For nine days, the Boilers languished in purgatory with no games around Christmas. It was still dead for most of the first game with Minnesota, but Purdue fought back from a double-digit halftime deficit against the Golden Gophers to begin the Big Ten season with a victory. That's when this road back started, but there is one key phrase when it comes to our current NCAA status:

"If the season ended today."

There is still work to do. There are eight games left in the season and with a softer looking Bubble, Purdue might be okay with a 4-4 split, but things are going well and I am greedy. With eight games left we have a shot of winning the Big Ten, so why not go for it? We have won four straight, three of them over ranked teams, and we're sitting in second place in the Big Ten. The first time we played Minnesota this looked impossible. In fact, it looked much more likely that the Gophers would be 7-3 and Purdue would be 3-7 when the two had a rematch, and that was with 8 minutes left in that New Year's Eve game!

So now we go to the Demon Wood of Xibalba. It is a place of doom for all Purdue basketball fans because of the memories of That Game.

The loss to Purdue was the first for Minnesota in a series of painful defeats that has seen them stumble out of Big Ten contention. They lost to Purdue by 4, Ohio State by 2 in overtime, Michigan by 5, Iowa by 2, Nebraska by 3, and Penn State by 5. This team very easily could be leading the Big Ten and ranked nationally in the top 15. What makes them dangerous on Saturday is that they really haven't been blown out in conference play except by Maryland. They have awful luck in close games, but they are good enough to at least have a chance.

The first game was mostly like so many of Purdue's bad performances this year. Minnesota was shooting well from the perimeter rebounding well, and generally out-toughing the Boilers. With 7:56 left they led by 8 and the game looked over.

Then, Purdue's defense finally returned.

In a span of 108 seconds Purdue erased the eight-point lead thanks to a basket by Isaac Haas, two threes from Kendall Stephens, a forced turnover, and a defensive stop. The rest of the way Purdue dictated the pace by finally playing nasty perimeter defense again, something that has only gotten better in recent weeks. The Stephens threes opened up the interior as Purdue had two layups, two dunks, and eight free throws by attacking the basket.

Basically, Purdue figured out how to play basketball the way it needed to win in those last minutes against the Gophers, and it is only what I have been screaming about for two and a half years. We returned to playing Purdue-style basketball and there were results.

Minnesota is still dangerous. Five players (Maurice Walker, Joey King, DeAndre Mathieu, Carlos Morris, and Nate Mason were all in double figures back then and they still spread the ball around. This was without leading scorer Andre Hollins hitting his morning 14.5 per game (he had 7). They're going to shoot the ball well and play good, hard basketball. This difference between us and them is that we have figured out how to win, and Minnesota is still working on that.

This is a tough game because Minnesota is always difficult to play at home and we didn't exactly run past them in West Lafayette. They were clearly the better team for 32 minutes before we dominated the last eight to win. As well as we have been playing, that intensity has to be maintained to keep the streak alive. A victory means Purdue could be on a seven game winning streak heading into Bloomington, but I don't want to get ahead of things. Let's focus on having a five-game winning streak around 5pm Saturday and take one more step towards solidifying our place in the NCAAs.