Wisconsin Overrated, Purdue Underrated

On the heels of our story about Purdue and Big Ten basketball comes another strong showing by Purdue, this time handing Wisconsin (ranked #8 in ESPN/USA Today coaches poll) another loss, marking a sweep of the Badgers and propelling Purdue into sole possesion of 1st place in the Big Ten.

After the teams went back and forth for the first four and half minutes, Purdue slowly went on to build a lead they would not relinquish for the rest of the game, leading Wiconsin for for most of the game, by anywhere from 3 to 13 points, and leading by about 7 to 8 most of the way.

Led by freshman Robbie Hummel's 21 points, the Boilermakers once again controlled the tempo of the game, and like their victory against Wisconsin earlier this year, they came back and responded each time Wisconsin threatened to come within striking distance of taking the lead. Even when Hummel went cold in the last ten minutes of the game, JaJuan Johnson came up with 6 crucial points, and Purdue fended off each run by the Badgers.

Like we highlighted previously, mark your calendar for these specific Big Ten games that will likely determine the outcome of who is ultimately crowned the Big Ten champion, as we are in the home stretch of conference play and most of the patsy games are out of the way:
02/12/08 - MSU @ PUR
02/13/08 - WIS @ IU
02/16/08 - MSU @ IU
02/19/08 - PUR @ IU
02/28/08 - MSU @ WIS
03/02/08 - IU @ MSU