ST. LOUIS — On the night he broke the NCAA’s career assist record, Purdue’s Braden Smith also displayed his ability to score.<\/p>\n
Smith’s game-high 26 points led four players in double figures as the second-seeded Boilermakers used a big run bridging the halves for a 104-71 rout of 15th-seeded Queens in the first round of the NCAA Tournament’s West Region on Friday.<\/p>\n
Smith also finished with eight assists, including the record-breaker with 12:10 left in the first half on Trey Kaufman-Renn’s driving layup. Smith has 1,082 assists for his career, breaking Bobby Hurley’s mark of 1,076 during his career at Duke.<\/p>\n
“It hasn’t really set in yet,” Smith said of setting the mark. “As a point guard, that’s what you’re supposed to do. I’ve been thankful and blessed to have people put the ball in my hands.”<\/p>\n
Kaufman-Renn added 25 points and nine rebounds, while Fletcher Loyer scored 14 points, going 4 of 8 on 3-point attempts. C.J. Cox chipped in 11 points and center Oscar Cluff stuffed the stat sheet with nine points, 11 rebounds, five assists and four blocked shots.<\/p>\n
“Purdue was the number one team in preseason for a reason,” Queens coach Grant Leonard said. “They’re pretty darn good.”<\/p>\n
Jordan Watford and Nasir Mann each scored 10 points for the Royals (21-14), who were making their first appearance in the Division I tourney. They trailed just 35-30 at the 2:57 mark of the first half after a putback by Maban Jabriel.<\/p>\n
But Cox stuck a corner 3-pointer on the next possession to begin a 10-0 Purdue run. After Chris Ashby canned a corner trey to end the half for Queens down 45-33, Purdue (28-8) opened up a 56-36 advantage with 17:17 left on Loyer’s transition 3-pointer.<\/p>\n
The rout was on as the Boilermakers kept carving up the undersized Royals with precise passing and shot-making. They drew 24 assists on 41 made buckets and converted at a 63.1% clip from the field.<\/p>\n
The only bit of suspense in the final 10 minutes became not if but when Purdue made it to 100 points. It got there with 2:27 remaining when Omer Mayer drilled its 13th 3-pointer of the game.<\/p>\n
Purdue sunk 14-of-24 attempts from behind the arc, including 10 of 16 in the second half. Queens shot a respectable 46.2% from the floor, but misfired on 18 of 25 shots from long distance.<\/p>\n
The Boilermakers advance to a second-round matchup on Sunday against seventh-seeded Miami (Fla.). The Hurricanes topped 10th-seeded Missouri 80-66 on Friday.<\/p>\n
–Bucky Dent, Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS — On the night he broke the NCAA’s career assist record, Purdue’s Braden Smith also displayed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[69289,68913,68523,16823,12612,9,24,63,67965,68049,122,124,123,68912],"class_list":["post-170338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-boilermakers","tag-braden-smith","tag-fletcher-loyer","tag-missouri","tag-ncaa","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-oscar-cluff","tag-purdue","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-trey-kaufman-renn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170338","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=170338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}