Boilermakers fade late in key Big Ten road game at Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Debilitating foul trouble and its effects on the defensive glass cost Purdue dearly Tuesday night, as the seventh-ranked Boilermakers fell at No. 20 Michigan 75-73, as the Wolverines used a late 14-4 run to erase the lead Purdue held most of the game and Braden Smith‘s desperate heave to win it fell short.

It was all about rebounding, as Trey Kaufman-Renn and Caleb Furst battled foul trouble most of the game, each picking up impactful fouls trying to keep Michigan off the offensive boards, as a lead that peaked at 10 in the second half slipped away.

“You gotta find a way,” Kaufman-Renn said. “That’s what Coach said: ‘On the road you’ve got to be 10 points better than the other team. Tonight, we weren’t.”

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Smith scored 24 points and Kaufman-Renn 22. Neither shot a free throw. Purdue was called for 10 more fouls than Michigan, lost its best two big men to fouls and didn’t shoot a bonus free throw until less than a minute remained, and it was freshman Raleigh Burgess who shot and missed the one-and-one, when he wouldn’t have been on the floor had Kaufman-Renn and Furst not fouled out.

Michigan scored eight points off the bonus.

Nevertheless, Purdue held robust leads in both halves.

Purdue led by 11 with under four minutes to play in the first half, but lost Kaufman-Renn to fouls with 2:37 left, contributing to the Boilermakers going scoreless the final 3:44. The Wolverines finished on a 9-0 run fueled by a prayer three by Danny Wolf and four points off one-and-one free throws.

In the second half, the lead was 10 at 14:44, moments before Kaufman-Renn picked up his third foul on a rebound, the area of the game that went completely sideways on Purdue down the stretch.

It was no one thing, not Michigan’s 13 second-chance points, nor the foul trouble that knee-capped Purdue — fouls on rebounds being the root cause — nor the points Michigan got without relying trying via the bonus. It was all of it.

“We just had to get some of those rebounds,” Matt Painter said. “… We just had to make those plays.”

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