CHICAGO — The Big Ten Conference hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament title since Michigan State in 2000, but Purdue looked capable of breaking through early this season, spending several weeks as the nation’s top-ranked team.
If anyone could end the Big Ten drought, the thinking was Matt Painter’s Boilermakers would be the ones to do it.
National Player of the Year favorite Zach Edey has been unstoppable at times, and Purdue has enough complementary perimeter players to pick up the slack when Edey is having a subpar night.