The only team in the nation scoring more points a game than Purdue is Iowa. This team has Final Four written all over it.”įriday night should be interesting in Mackey Arena. POWER 36: Andy Katz places Purdue high in his latest rankingsįlorida State coach Leonard Hamilton called the Boilermakers “the most complete team I’ve played against in a long time. The national stat leaders list is a Purdue pamphlet - second in Division I in scoring, field goal percentage and 3-point shooting, third in rebound margin. They are only the third team in 20 years to go seven games in a row with 80-plus points while shooting better than 50 percent overall and 35 percent from the 3-point line. They have broken 90 points in six games, and shot 50 percent in all seven - the longest streak for the program in 35 years. The Boilermakers have trailed only 22 minutes and 53 seconds in a seven-game start that includes wins over North Carolina and Villanova and the 93-65 mashing of Florida State Tuesday night. Others have won higher profile games, but nobody has aced the eye test this season more than 7-0 Purdue. If they beat Iowa Friday night, that will very likely change next week. The Boilermakers have been playing basketball since 1896 and have never spent one second at No. Last season Iowa State did the same thing lots of days, too. I do the same thing every single day, our team does the same thing every single day.” “I’m not a real exciting or forward-looking type of person. We need to practice at such a high level that when we get to a game, we only know one way to do things.

“You’re not going to play better in the game than you practice. “You just don’t get good at it by hoping to,” he said. Otzelberger told them what he wanted - ball pressure, rebounding, toughness - and it would be a daily exercise to make it happen.

You have to want to play for each other, you actually have to care about each other and you have to invest that time off the court.” “When you play together as a group, there’s a basketball component to it, but there’s also a people component. “We outlined how our day would go every day,” he said. Otzelberger, twice an assistant in Ames, came from UNLV to be the new coach, and the top six scorers include five transfers from five different schools and one freshman. In dumping Memphis, the Cyclones blocked 10 shots and had 13 steals.īehold the value of fresh faces. No opponent has shot better than 44 percent against them their turnover differential is plus-4.7 and five different Iowa State players have scored 15-plus points in the past three games. They have snapped a batch of losing streaks - 18 in a row overall, eight at home, 19 against ranked opponents, 28 away from home, 25 against power conferences. This is where we need to insert the part that the Cyclones were 2-22 last season. The month ended with 18 unbeaten teams, and Iowa State was one of them at 6-0. Here are nine appealing storylines that November gave us. “There’s a tough-mindedness that teams - if they don’t have it, they’d better get it,” Holtmann said. Looks like it’s going to be a mentally taxing season. One moment, it was Dayton taking out Kansas for the first time since 1968, the next it was Iona sideswiping Alabama, giving the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference its first victory over a top-10 team after 119 consecutive losses. 5 Duke, who would then be outscored 12-0 the last four minutes by Ohio State, who earlier had needed a last-second basket at home to beat Akron. 1 Gonzaga, who would then be upended by No. So it was a properly boisterous first month of the season, where in a final week of tumult, No. According to ESPN, they had won 185 such games in a row since the last time that happened. The Blue Devils blew a double-digit halftime lead (13) and lost. It added to the Buckeyes’ reputation as accomplished big-game hunters they’re a rather startling 8-3 in their last 11 games against No. It likely meant a third different name on the top line of the polls in the season’s fifth week. 1 Duke 71-66 was the seventh game of the month that an unranked team had taken down a top-10 opponent. “I hope,” Buckeyes’ coach Chris Holtmann would say afterward, “the students enjoy it well into the morning.” But no, this was yet another upset in the last hours of November for college basketball. COLUMBUS, Ohio - The roars were so loud at Ohio State, you’d have thought the Michigan football score had been legally overturned.

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