There are few games in the first round of this year\u2019s NCAA Tournament that are bigger mismatches in terms of March Madness experience than the one tonight between No. 2 seed Purdue and 15th-seeded Queens College.<\/p>\n
The Boilermakers (27-8) are a tournament fixture, in the field for the 11th tournament in a row and 17th in 21 seasons under coach Matt Painter. This particular Purdue team brings back four starters from the group that reached the Sweet 16 last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t take it for granted,\u201d said Painter, whose team is a top-4 seed for a ninth tournament in a row, the longest active streak in the country. \u201cWe know it\u2019s hard work to get in this position. It\u2019s hard for everybody, no matter what your seed is, to get in this position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Queens (21-13), meanwhile, is not only playing in its first NCAA Tournament, it only became eligible for the tournament this season, its fourth since moving up from Division II. The six players who average double-figures scoring for the Atlantic Sun Conference entrant have zero minutes of March Madness experience.<\/p>\n
Yes, the matchup today at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis is another David vs. Goliath story, with the Boilermakers playing the role of the giant. Those matchups have not always gone Purdue\u2019s way \u2013 the Royals are well aware of the Boilermakers\u2019 losses to 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson, 15th-seeded St. Peter\u2019s and No. 13 seed North Texas over the last half-decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey definitely do have a history of it, but they are not the same team that they were in those other games,\u201d said Queens forward Nasir Mann, who averages a team-leading 13.4 points. \u201cNeither are we. We are not Fairleigh Dickinson. We have our own team. We have our own identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Queens believes that identity gives it an opportunity to pull a monster upset. The Royals are one of the fastest-paced teams in the country, racing up and down the floor at every opportunity and ranking 18th nationally in scoring at 84.9 points per game.<\/p>\n
They are 28th nationally in 3-pointers, hitting 10.2 per game, and 62nd in shooting percentage from beyond the arc at 36.0%. Purdue gave up the second-most 3-pointers in the Big Ten this season, surrendering 9.1 per contest.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody on our team can shoot the ball at a pretty good clip,\u201d Mann said. \u201cI think that\u2019s a very dangerous thing. You can get hot at any given moment, especially in March Madness. That\u2019s when the miracles truly happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The good news for Purdue: It\u2019s veteran core of Braden Smith, Trey Kaufman-Renn and Homestead graduate Fletcher Loyer have shined in the first round in recent years. Since losing to FDU as freshmen, they have helped the Boilermakers post drama-free wins over No. 16 seed Grambling State and 13th-seeded High Point in this round, with Smith averaging 15.5 points and eight assists, Kaufman-Renn posting 16 points and 7.5 rebounds per game and Loyer averaging eight points.<\/p>\n
Over the last two seasons, the Boilers are 7-2 in the tournament and 4-0 against double-digit seeds. And they are refusing to look past the Royals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t look at it as, we\u2019re a low seed and they\u2019re a high seed,\u201d Kaufman-Renn said. \u201cThey\u2019re just a really good team. We\u2019ve proven this year in not the best ways that we can lose to teams we\u2019re better than.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaufman-Renn appeared to injure his shoulder at the end of Purdue\u2019s 80-72 Big Ten Tournament title-game win over Michigan on Sunday, but reassured media Thursday he is \u201cfeeling good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The winner at the Enterprise Center tonight will move on to the round of 32 to face either No. 7 seed Miami (Florida) or 10th-seeded Missouri on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Well before the victor is decided there is likely to be some history made. Smith is just one assist away from equaling Bobby Hurley\u2019s Division I career record of 1,076, which has stood since 1993. The senior point guard helped Purdue to the Big Ten Tournament crown with 46 assists across four games, a record for any conference tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is the smartest player in the country basketball IQ-wise,\u201d Queens coach Grant Leonard, in his fourth season leading the program, said. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the five toughest players in America. That doesn\u2019t include the skill, the passing, how he makes his teammates better. The respect I have for him is infinite.\u201d<\/p>\n
The visit to the Enterprise Center is a return to familiar environs for Painter, who spent six years at Southern Illinois (five as an assistant one as head coach), which played in the building in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament.<\/p>\n
The Salukis never won the title while Painter was there, though they did get to the final twice. He knows how difficult it is advance through a mid-major conference tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cGot a lot of respect for the low to mid-major teams out there that have to win three or four games in a row to get here,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a tough world. I have been in that world. Got a lot of respect for Queens and what they have been able to do. … It is going to be a tough game for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are few games in the first round of this year\u2019s NCAA Tournament that are bigger mismatches in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[44704,35079,69289,68913,3361,68523,66205,69290,21533,12612,63552,9,24,63,68049,122,124,123,20033,68912],"class_list":["post-169034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-atlantic-sun-conference","tag-big-ten","tag-boilermakers","tag-braden-smith","tag-college-basketball","tag-fletcher-loyer","tag-grant-leonard","tag-matt-painter","tag-nasir-mann","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-purdue","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-queens-royals","tag-trey-kaufman-renn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}