Purdue shocks another #4 team

A game that started with Purdue digging themselves into a 16-point hole, ended as the biggest win of the season. The Purdue Boilermakers handed No. 4 Ohio State their first conference loss on Monday night. At the beginning of the night, it appeared it wouldn’t end well for the Boilermakers as they quickly fell behind 16-0. Those first 6:40 were ugly for Purdue as they missed their first 10 shots to start the game. Eventually they got on the board and freshman guard K.K. Houser helped them begin to settle down. A three-point play by Houser brought the Boilermakers within three points but when halftime came they still trailed OSU 32-29. Purdue has started games slowly and trailed into halftime before, and according to Brittany Rayburn, it doesn’t always end the way Monday night’s game did. “I think it showed our team’s maturity. We’ve had this happen to us before. Earlier in the season, we might have folded.”
Purdue came out strong and took one-point leads twice, but that quickly turned around. With about 13 minutes left, Johnson hit a three to put the Buckeyes up 44-37. Again, Purdue rallied and tied the score at 48 on a three-point play by Rayburn with just under eight minutes remaining. Almost immediately Houser added another three-point play, putting Purdue up 51-48. The game remained close through the end and with just over a minute to play, Ostarello had a put-back to give the Boilermakers a 61-56 lead. With only 16.4 seconds left, Purdue fouled Ohio State’s Sarah Schulze, who made both free throws to bring the score to 61-58. 3.2 second later Houser was fouled and pushed the lead back up to 63-58 after making both free throws. As expected, Ohio State was able to count on Prahalis to answer with a quick 3-pointer. It was then a two-point game with only 7.8 seconds remaining. The Buckeyes were smart and immediately fouled. Rayburn missed her first free throw and OSU came up with the rebound. Prahalis drove the length of the court , everyone was shocked by how open she was. Clearly Prahalis was equally shocked as she missed the open lay-up at the buzzer to tie the game. She finished the game with 11 points and Jantel Lavender led with 17 points and 10 rebounds.

The reason Purdue was even in any position to celebrate a win was the impressive play of their three freshmen. Houser led the Boilermakers with a career-high 18 points, while fellow freshman Sam Ostarello added 14. Ostarello also had seven rebounds for Purdue. Ashley Wilson added 8 points. The freshmen trio’s contributions add up to 40 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and two steals. In addition to the outstanding effort by the Purdue bench, was the shared defensive success of Alex Guyton and Chelsea Jones against Big Ten leading scorer Jantel Lavendar. OSU Coach Jim Foster agreed this hurt the Buckeyes, “I think they were physical, I think they kept her off balance. And quite frankly, she missed some shots she usually makes.” Foster also thinks their 36%/37% shooting percentages in the past two games have contributed to the losses. “The last two games, we’ve missed a lot of layups, a lot of point-blank shots. You’re not going to be a good team if you do that.”
You almost had to see this upset in order to believe it, and even seeing it didn’t make it much easier to believe. But, upsetting the No. 4 team in the country isn’t new to the Boilermakers. The win over Ohio State was the second year in a row Purdue beat the #4 team, last year it was a shocking upset of Texas. Beating a top 5 team would give anyone confidence, and Purdue will bring that confidence into their next game Thursday against Penn State.

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