Purdue faces its staunchest opponent yet in top-seeded Houston

The Cougars, No. 1 in the country in defensive efficiency and three-point shooting. After a 4-3 start, they've lost just one game since November. Yeah, good luck with that.

Now the fourth-seeded Boilers move up in weight class – move waaay up in the class of competition they’ll face in this NCAA Tournament. High Point and McNeese were willing combatants, but Purdue was never in any kind of trouble in the first two rounds, winning both games by double digits.

The top-seeded Houston Cougars, coached by everybody’s favorite scofflaw, Kelvin Sampson, are a juggernaut.

They’re top 10 in offensive efficiency (as is Purdue). They’re the stingiest defensive team in the country, allowing just 58.4 points per game. They are the best in the country at shooting and making the 3-point shot. They’re 32-4 despite going 4-3 to start the season, meaning they’ve lost just one game since November.

This game will be about tempo. Houston likes to slow it down. Purdue wants to play more up-tempo. But can they survive against a team that is the best in the nation defensively and among the best in offensive rebounding?

“I think it starts with their bigs,” Braden Smith said, referring to Houston’s defensive prowess. “I think their ball pressure is really good. I think they can corral the ball-on-ball screens. They cause havoc. They've got quick, athletic guards that are pressuring the ball. You're dealing with two tough defenders on you.

“For my case, coming off a ball screen or whatever the read is. So just that. When they're in the post, they've got two big guys that are super athletic. They're really good with their trap. I think just for us understanding that and just being simple with the ball, I think we'll be fine.”

In other words, Smith, the top player in the Big Ten this season, cannot turn the ball over eight times, as he did in a somewhat sloppy performance against McNeese.

My sense is they’ll take the ball out of Smith’s hands, blitzing and attacking the ball screens and forcing him to get rid of the basketball. That will put significant pressure on Trey Kaufman-Renn, who will be asked to pass the ball, and the rest of the support crew. If Purdue is going to pull off the upset, it will need folks like Fletcher Loyer, Cam Heide and Myles Colvin to continue be aggressive and make their shots from behind the arc. Both Heide (63 percent in the last 10 games) and Colvin (37 percent in the same span) have been far more willing to take those shots and both are hitting their 3’s in the previous 10 games.

“Houston is a fabulous all-around team, No. 1 team in the country in defense but also 3-point percentage,” Matt Painter said Thursday. “And they have players coming off the bench for them that are great players.

“It's one of those things that they're so good defensively, if you don't take that shot, it's kind of like facing a real pitcher in the Major Leagues and you get that first good pitch, you take it, you're probably not getting another good pitch. That was a mistake. So, when you get shots you’ve got to take them because when you don't take them you'll end up with shot-clock violations and pick-six turnovers. They're so active and they do such a good job disrupting the basketball, whether that's their post defense and their doubles or it's their aggressive ball-screen defense or just playing passing lanes and their overall pressure.

“…It's going to be important for us to let it rip…When the coaching staff and everybody on the team is telling those guys, hey, you've got to take your shots, and then they're pausing or passing them up, that doesn't help our offense whatsoever. We don't have five guys out there creating for us. We have a couple of guys creating for us. So it's important to take the ones that come your way.”

When Kaufman-Renn gets assists, three or more, the Boilers win, going 11-2. Tonight, he’ll be asked to show off that skill.

“As these guys (teammates) will tell you, that’s not a trait (passing) that I thought I was going to develop,” said Kaufman-Renn, arguably the most improved player in the nation. “But no, it's just one of those things where there's going to be people doubling me or we're going to have open shooters that knock down a high percentage of shots, you've got to get it to them. You've got to get it to people who can score the ball. I have confidence in everybody on our team. It's the best look for Purdue.”

I’ll be honest: I’m rooting hard for Purdue. Not just because they’re a local team, but because of who Painter is, what he’s built in West Lafayette and how they’ve built this program. Nothing against Sampson – we’ve already written plenty about the way he negatively impacted the IU program – but Painter has done things the old-fashioned way, with high school recruits and very few portal additions…although Painter foresees the Boilers adding a couple of portal players this off-season.

Of all Sweet 16 teams, Purdue is the only one whose starting five are all players who were recruited and developed by Painter and his staff. It’s an old school program. At least for now.

“Well, first of all, we're somewhere where there's good high school coaches and there's good players,” Painter said of coaching in Indiana. “I think that's probably the number one thing for us is that there's a lot of guys here in the state of Indiana for us to recruit…

“But we've just stayed the same path as we have before. Like we've taken transfers before. Even though we've taken two people out of the portal in four years, probably the fewest amount in the country, but we still took someone out of the portal that was a big piece for us last year going to the Final Four in Lance Jones…It's just kind of the way in terms of how you recruit and how you go about things. Probably the fact that we've been able to keep guys sometimes kind of blows your mind because it's hard, right, if you have 13 guys on scholarship, to keep everybody happy…”

To the Boilers’ benefit, they’ve played a daunting non-conference schedule that should help them once they get a look at Houston’s athleticism and passion. But Houston is another beast altogether. I’m rooting for the Boilers and it should help this is essentially a home game here at Lucas Oil – Houston got screwed geographically -- but this, I believe, is a bridge too far. Prediction sure to go wrong: Houston 74, Purdue 64.