Game Recap: Texas 72, Purdue 68

Purdue is in the middle of a grueling five-game stretch, losing back to back road games at Florida St. and at Michigan in their first road tests of the year before bouncing back for a tough home win against Maryland on Thursday.

Texas is in the middle of a six-game home stand that hasn’t started out the way coach Shaka Smart would like. They’ve lost three in a row, a neutral-court loss to Michigan State and back to back upsets by Radford and VCU at home.

Carsen Edwards was the star of the show, scoring 40 points in his return to the state of Texas, but it was the Longhorns that ended their slide with a tough fought victory, 72-68.

It was a coming home game for Carsen Edwards, who played his first game in Texas in nearly three years after attending Atascocita High School, just outside of Houston. With his mother and family and friends in attendance, he put on a show. After a relatively quiet (for him) start to the game with just 12 first half points, the second half was all about Carsen Edwards.

He scored 40 points for the game, an incredible 28 points in the second half. He was a one-man show in the second half, with only two other Boilermakers scoring a field goal in the second half. Edwards was everything Purdue needed on a day no one else could make a shot. He was 15 of 26 from the field, making half of his 14 three-point attempts and accounting for 3 assists. That’s half of the teams total assist total.

Ryan Cline also had 3 assists while continuing to struggle from three-point land. He was 1 of 9 from deep, scoring 7 points for the whole game. Matt Haarms was Purdue second-leading scorer with 10 points on seven attempts.

But it was Purdue’s defense and a hot-shooting night for Texas that pushes Purdue back to 6-4 on the year. Texas came into the game shooting 28.9% from three but made 11 of 25 attempts, most of them wide open as Purdue struggled to contain the dribble and was forced to over help off the perimeter.

Texas also made their gold from the free throw line despite coming in as a 64.8% free throw shooting team, they went 15 of 16 from the line including a couple big makes late. Purdue had a 9 to 1 deficit from the line in the first half and took just 7 free throws for the game.

Purdue will now look to right itself against Notre Dame on Saturday at the Crossroads Classic. They’ve now lost 3 of their last 4 games.