WEST LAFAYETTE, IN - UCLA (20-9, 11-7) put up a fight but were blown out in the final minutes in a 76-66 loss against no. 20 Purdue (20-9, 12-6) Friday, Feb. 28.
The Bruins trailed throughout the first half. Purdue put together a strong run early and jumped out to a 10-point lead with six minutes remaining.
Junior guard Braden Smith and junior forward Trent Kaufman-Renn lit the spark for Purdue offensively in the first half. The two juniors combined for 24 first-half points, shooting a combined 10-15 from the field.
Smith and Kaufman-Renn continued to dominate for Purdue, finishing the game as the top two point scorers for either team and combining for 52 of Purdue’s 76 points.
The Bruins jumped back into the game quickly after falling behind by 10 with back-to-back threes by UCLA sophomore guard Sebastian Mack and senior guard Lazar Stefanovic as part of an 8-0 run for the Bruins to cut the Purdue lead down to two. The Bruins kept close after that and went into halftime trailing just two, 37-35, behind the Boilermakers.
The Bruins scored 30 points off the bench in the game, a main part of their scoring. Mack was the leader off the bench for the Bruins, scoring 10 in the first half alone. Despite his first half success, Mack was scoreless in the second and finished the game with 10 points overall.
"We had so many lapses that it's hard to get a flow going when we're making mistakes," Mack said in a postgame interview.
The Bruins turned the ball over nine times in the first half compared to just six turnovers by the Boilermakers.
UCLA made up for that disparity with a strong rebounding performance in the first, pulling down 20 boards while Purdue only had eight. It was these rebounds, particularly offensive ones, that kept the ball in Bruin hands and gave them the chance to score and come back.
UCLA junior forward Tyler Bilodeau gave the Bruins their first lead of the game in the second half after drawing a foul on an and-one layup after getting knocked down as he laid up the ball off a feed by guard Dylan Andrews.
Bilodeau sank his one free throw and the Bruins led 42-40 with 17-and-a-half minutes left. Bilodeau led the Bruins in scoring, knocking down 15 points while shooting 7-13 from the field.
After UCLA came in close, the game shifted to a constant back and forth exchange, neither time breaking away by more than a single possession.
The tide turned sharply toward the Boilermakers as the second half wound down.
A massive 12-0 run for Purdue capped off with a three by Purdue junior guard Fletcher Loyer squarely returned the lead to the Boilermakers with 3:47 remaining.
Mackey Arena roared nearly every second of the game and only grew louder as the Boilermakers broke away.
Purdue’s storming of the scoreboard was paired with a scoring drought by the Bruins through the last two-and-a-half of the game and the Boilermakers closed out with a 10-point-lead to defeat the Bruins 76-66.
The win snapped a four-game losing streak for Purdue.
UCLA shot a more efficient second half than Purdue, shooting 11-22 from the field, but Purdue had them beat in pure volume and, more impactfully, from beyond the arc.
Purdue shot 7-14 from three in the second half, making up over half of their points, while UCLA only landed one three the entire second half in return.
"The bottom line was: we couldn't stop them," Cronin said in a postgame interview.
The Bruins stay on the road to next play Northwestern Monday, March 3 at 6 pm at Welsh-Ryan Arena.