Purdue head basketball coach Matt Painter addresses Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper after Boilermakers beat Rutgers

Purdue men’s hoops has picked up immoderate steam with four consecutive wins. With their latest 68-50 triumph implicit Rutgers, the No. 20 Boilermakers moved to 4-1 successful Big Ten action.

Despite a acold shooting nighttime from three, Purdue held beardown connected the antiaircraft end. The Boilermakers held the Scarlet Knights to 32.7% shooting from the field. They besides constricted their turnovers portion forcing Rutgers into 16 of them.

Rutgers freshmen Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper are some projected top-three picks successful the 2025 NBA Draft. The 2 superstar prospects person fueled their team’s discourtesy this play with a combined 39.0 points per game, and that fig would beryllium higher if not for Harper’s past 2 outings.

Harper has dealt with a pugnacious lawsuit of the flu during Rutgers’ three-game losing streak, sitting retired the archetypal contention against Indiana earlier playing lone 16 minutes against Wisconsin. After scoring zero points with lone 2 changeable attempts against the Badgers, Harper inched person to his regular workload with 28 minutes against Purdue.

Harper mustered six points connected 2/9 shooting successful his team’s latest loss. Before his past 2 appearances, Harper had been averaging 22.7 points for the season. 

Purdue caput manager Matt Painter addressed Harper’s unwellness successful his postgame presser.

“We're precise fortunate to play them (Rutgers) astatine this time,” Painter said. “Obviously, they're going done Dylan Harper being sick … obviously, he's not the aforesaid subordinate coming disconnected the flu. Whenever you person idiosyncratic similar that, your relation explanation – you're searching that out.”

With his moving mate astatine little than 100%, Bailey struggled to transportation the load arsenic helium enactment up 17 points connected 5/15 shooting. Rutgers does not make overmuch casual discourtesy extracurricular of Bailey and Harper, which made beingness precise hard for Bailey from a spacing standpoint. Although the 6-foot-10 helping couldn’t volition his squad to victory, Painter acknowledged Bailey’s endowment aft the game.

"We're precise fortunate to play them astatine this clip due to the fact that we each cognize however talented helium (Dylan Harper) is, and however talented Ace Bailey is, and however bully of a programme these guys have, and however pugnacious they are to play here,” Painter told the media. “Gene Keady utilized to ever say, ‘It's not who you play but erstwhile you play them.'”

Purdue volition look for a 5th consecutive triumph connected January 12 against Nebraska. Meanwhile, Bailey and Harper volition look to get backmost successful the triumph file connected January 13 against UCLA.