Upon Further Review: Defensive dominance, offensive pace and more from top-ranked Purdue's Big Ten-opening win at Rutgers

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — After each Purdue basketball game this season, GoldandBlack.com will take a detailed look back at the contest to highlight some of its finer points.

Today, the Boilermakers’ 81-65 Big Ten-opening win at Rutgers.

PDF: Purdue-Rutgers statistics

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PURDUE TEAM DEFENSE

Don’t judge a defensive performance by statistics, but rather look at the shots an offense needed to make just to score.

On the playground, we called a lot of this stuff “crap,” or some variation thereof.

These are the shots Purdue wanted Rutgers needing to make.

Look at how prompt and purposeful Purdue seems to be in this stuff. It is pretty clear they are paying attention, starters and reserves alike.

Look what they do to poor Liam Murphy here. This should have been a flagrant.

There’s always been kind of an East Coast blacktop iso-ball offensive identity at Rutgers, but when you don’t have good enough players, that stuff plays right into opponents’ hands eventually. The Knights were never gonna make enough of these shots to have a chance, the way Purdue was defending.

Great job by TKR here shutting off the lane.

All these clips above, Rutgers scored. It’s possible that when coaches graded the film they put every one of these down as wins.

One last thing on defense, this is what 7-foot-4 does to wild, fundamentally unsound dribblers. Good job by Gicarri Harris anticipating the wheels coming off.

PURDUE OFFENSE

One of the many areas where Rutgers couldn’t keep up was just with the speed the Boilermakers can run their stuff at.

This is Road Runner offense from Braden Smith that leaves two shooters wide open. The number of plays in this game where Purdue had multiple great shots available to them was pretty staggering.

It is clearly an emphasis for Purdue this season to put Smith off the ball in order to allow him to accelerate into handoffs and put immense burden on defenses to figure it out in an instant.

Here’s how Purdue opened the second half, made possible by Smith being able to play at hummingbird pace.

This stuff is all about floor-spacing, Purdue manning both corners with shooters to open the middle for the pick-and-roll, then eliminate help at the rim.

The corner shooting presences just really knock out opponents’ ability to help along the baseline.

This is Oscar Cluff getting the ball right at the rim off a pass that just as easily could have been a sweet-spot shot for Trey Kaufman-Renn, with wide-open shooters in both corners. TKR could have just as easily thrown this to Fletcher Loyer on the left wing.

Speaking off spacing, it’s not just stretching people out to the arc.

Here, the threat of the lob to the 5 man seems to dissuade Rutgers’ big guy from trying to protect the rim on this TKR drive. All he ends up doing is literally pushing his teammate into a foul, which would be sort of funny if it wasn’t dangerous.

Purdue basically put a bow on this win in the second half with Smith baiting Rutgers’ big guy into switches, then not letting go.

Smith is just dictating who he wants on him in this matchup-type zone, and once he has his man, he backs out and everyone else just gets out of the way.

Look at the misdirection Purdue throws at Rutgers here to finagle the switch.

Last thing about offense, forget the shot-making for a second and focus on what Harris did with the dribble against closeouts. Great decisions.

TKR could have just as soon thrown this back out to Harris for a three.

This was definitely a game in which Purdue’s experience playing together just overwhelmed the opponent.

Can’t think of a more flowery term than “symphonic” to describe this instructional manual of a possession.

Purdue’s found a number of ways to make two bigs plays together not just work, but dominate.

Here, Rutgers has a “low man” sitting in the lane to help against the pick-and-roll. Kaufman-Renn just pins that guy — again, Purdue essentially deciding who it wants guarding its best players — and Smith throws a picturesque entry. Had the shot missed the roll man is standing right there.

Now that this grueling stretch of games come up, opponents might be better prepared for some of the things is doing.

For one thing, disrupting this pocket pass is going to have to be a goal. Rutgers’ bigs weren’t good enough to disrupt any of this.

Rutgers did keep to its MO of torpedo’ing Purdue’s roll man, which is kind of legal-adjacent, very difficult to call properly.

Did it work? It sure didn’t here. Cluff smash.

BRADEN SMITH STUFF

This was as complete a game, seemed like, as Braden Smith could have played, a real whatever-the-team-needs-tonight sort of outing.

First off, a guy who sometimes just stands down as a scorer came out firing from deep, a key tone to set given the paramount importance of people defending him as a score-first threat. So much opens up off that.

But just as important: Smith was really good on defense, an area where the seniors can all set an example for everybody else.

Some nuance here. To open the game, Rutgers ran this set to go after Smith away from the ball and got a three off it.

They went back to it a few minutes later and Smith shut it down.

Also, this might look like a pretty routine pass. It is not. Don’t take it for granted.

ETC

• Trey Kaufman-Renn looks like a player determined to get 10 rebounds every game. This was Purdue’s first possession.