It wasn’t pretty, but in March, basketball is never a beauty contest.
No. 3-seed Purdue got 26 points and four assists from Carsen Edwards, holding on to a 61-48 win after a late run from Conference USA champ Old Dominion trimmed a 20 point lead to single digits.
It was about par for the course for this Purdue program. Edwards finished with 26 points but needed 23 shots to get there, but his inefficiency did not matter as the Boilers were stout enough defensively to win while scoring 61 points.
Purdue will advance to face Villanova, and it’s a matchup that should be worrisome for Matt Painter’s club. The truth is that Purdue is not a great 1-on-1 team but rather they get their offense from effectively running the sets that head coach Matt Painter schemes up. Villanova switches everything, which makes running offense ineffective against them, and it’s fair to wonder where, exactly, the scoring is going to come from for Purdue is Edwards churns out another 7-for-23 performance.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Because all that matters is that Purdue is going to have a chance to play that game.
They can figure the rest out later.