I only watched part of the last 10 minutes, so I wondered, choke job?
and then I looked at the play by play. Oh dear.
Yep. 38 points in the first half. Went into halftime with a 13 point lead.
17 points in the second half.
9-21 from the charity stripe, including missing a lot of the front end of 1-and-1's. 33.9% from the field, 25% from 3pt range.
And while I can't easily find per-half stats, you can clearly tell from those shooting stats and the score that the first half was pretty decent shooting, and the second half was abysmal. Rebounding was one of those. Purdue had a HUGE advantage in the first half. HUGE disadvantage in the second half.
Purdue even played pretty good defense, holding Marquette <40% shooting, <30% 3pt shooting. And not just statistically--the eye test as well. It's not like Marquette was just missing open looks left and right. They really looked like they were harassing Marquette, forcing mostly very tough shots, and generally were a lot more cohesive than against Texas.
But none of that matters if you don't bother showing up for both halves of the game.
