Takeaways: Turnovers, lineups, defensive problems and more from Purdue's loss at UCLA

LOS ANGELES — Fourth-ranked Purdue slipped up for the first time in Big Ten play Tuesday night, as UCLA closed on an 8-0 run to upend the Boilermakers 69-67 in Westwood.

Our GoldandBlack.com post-game analysis from the loss …

PDF: Purdue-UCLA stats

Subscribe to GoldandBlack.com’s YouTube channel

DON’T OVERTHINK IT

It was turnovers. When Purdue loses, it’s always turnovers.

Go find a loss from the past five years or so that didn’t involve some game-changing run of turnovers.

Purdue committed three after it led by six with two minutes to go. That was as much as the defensive issue as anything related to pick-and-pop defense. And again, it’s not the number of turnovers, but the impact. The final two minutes weren’t Braden Smith‘s finest hour, but you live by the sword, you die on occasion by the sword. These are mortal men playing a game in which funny things happen. Purdue was playing a good defensive team that had reason to be desperate and looked like it.

Any close game, you can point to any number of things that could have flipped the outcome, but the simplest answer and most inarguable is the turnovers.

Notable: Donovan Dent clearly reached in from behind on Smith on the late turnover that went the other way for UCLA. Whether it was enough to call is hard to say based on immediately available replays, but it obviously affected the play.

ON PURDUE LINEUPS

Purdue’s bench played very well during these two games in California, which was the best development of the trip. Jack Benter, Gicarri Harris and Omer Mayer were all very good. Does that mean that Purdue ought to be pushing aside in crunch time the seniors that have brought the program to a level where courts get stormed every time they lose?

That’s debatable. Every decision can be litigated as the wrong one after a narrow loss.

Experience does matter at the end of games, as does rebounding.

That doesn’t mean experience guarantees you anything. Seniors lose games, too, and Purdue lost this game because UCLA’s two seniors, Dent and Tyler Bilodeau, made one more play than Purdue’s did.

Purdue is big. That means there can be issues matching up on the perimeter. Everyone is going to try to exploit that and that’s how UCLA pulled this off.

Having Oscar Cluff on Bilodeau and trying to hedge on Dent was a big ask. Putting Jack Benter on the floor because he’s more mobile would have meant taking Trey Kaufman-Renn, your best rebounder and an important offensive player and one of your most experienced players, out. Purdue’s greatest strength is its experience, and having guys out there who’ve played a hundred college games and won the overwhelming majority of them is rarely the wrong decision. But everything’s the wrong decision when the margin is razor-thin.

Maybe Benter would gotten out to Bilodeau faster, though Cluff did get a respectable contest, or given Purdue the option to switch fully, which would have put Benter in a really tough spot on Dent.

But you never know.

This we do know: You want to make Dent a jump-shooter.

But guess what: That three Dent made right after Purdue went up six was made by a guy who came in shooting 17 percent on the season from long range.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

ON TREY KAUFMAN-RENN

After his play at USC was cause for some consternation, Kaufman-Renn was very good at UCLA: 10 points, seven rebounds, five assists and no turnovers in 26 minutes. If there’s anything to look back on and lament, it might be not getting him more touches. He took six shots, and the only two misses were threes, one of them an end-of-clock heave.

Purdue could have used more poise. It went to fast a few times in transition and golden opportunities turned into de facto turnovers. UCLA blocked eight shots, many of them leading to run-outs. Grinding UCLA in the halfcourt more with Kaufman-Renn might have been the better way, but again, you live by aggressiveness, sometimes you die by it.

ON FLETCHER LOYER

Yes, he is missing open shots at a shocking rate for a shooter of his caliber.

But, again, you don’t just kick your experienced guys who’ve brought you to this level to the curb.

Painter is a confidence coach. He will stick by his guys. In the narrow view right after a loss, the big picture gets obscured sometimes.

The big picture is what Purdue is all about. One loss does not mean cause for alarm, wholesale changes or whatever.

These guys have all been through these sorts of ebbs and flows and by and large come out on the right side of it.

Losses are inevitable. Struggles are inevitable. They’re part of the process.

Purdue and Loyer alike will come out of it just fine. Watch.