Nebraska Basketball: Huskers miss big opportunity at Purdue

Nebraska basketball was hanging with Purdue for most of the game Saturday, however, the Huskers fell apart and blew a big opportunity for a key win.

With the way that Nebraska basketball has been playing in recent weeks, it wouldn’t have been surprising to see the Huskers get completely blown out by the surging Purdue Boilermakers.

Yet, when the two teams met Saturday at Purdue, Nebraska basketball was highly competitive and even led the game multiple times in the first half, before completely falling apart again offensively in an 81-62 loss, which was the sixth consecutive loss for the Huskers as well as their eighth defeat in the last 10 games.

Nebraska basketball is now 3-9 in the Big Ten and 13-10 overall, which is stunning after such a hot start to the season but the game against Purdue was just a microcosm of that.

Early on, the Huskers looked primed to pull an upset. James Palmer came out and scored 11 points in the first half and after he drilled a 3-pointer at the seven-minute mark of the first half, the Huskers led 25-21.

After Purdue tied things up at 25-25, Thomas Allen, who had a stellar night off the bench hit another triple and the Huskers again had the lead, unfortunately, it wouldn’t last for long. The Boilermakers recovered to grab a two-point lead at the half and once the second 20 minutes got underway, Nebraska ran out of gas.

Palmer, who played all 40 minutes, scored just seven second-half points and the Boilermakers opened the second stanza on a 14-4 run, a spurt capped by a Grady Eifert three.

Eifert scoring was something that happened a lot as he finished with 16 and was 2-of-2 from deep. But the real killer was the dynamic Carsen Edwards, who went off for 27 points, even though he was 2-of-8 from beyond the arc. He got to the free throw line nine times and made all of them.

Allen did his best to keep the Huskers in it, hitting three triples early in the second half, the last of which trimmed the Purdue lead to 52-44. Yet, Edwards answered with a three and Purdue eventually racked up 48 points in the final 20 minutes.

In the end, the loss was understandable. Purdue is 10-2 in the Big Ten and is a half-game behind Michigan for first. The Boilermakers are playing as well as anyone right now and so winning on their home floor was always going to be a huge challenge.

Nebraska basketball held its own and that’s a good thing, however, the Huskers needed a win like that and a winning streak to follow if it was going to climb back into tournament contention. Now, at 3-9, the Huskers will be lucky to avoid playing in the opening games of the Big Ten tournament.