What does Fairleigh Dickinson's win over No. 1 Purdue mean? The Athletic's writers weigh in. '[It] cements the undeniable truth that college basketball’s postseason is superior to every other sport ... The world still has a place for underdogs.'
Those are all valid pattern recognition exercises. And yet: Purdue missed a bunch of wide-open 3s. Like,open. Instead of shooting itself into a lead early, it bricked itself into a close game, and once that happens everyone gets nervous and scared and starts playing like it. We see this all the time; let the underdog hang around, let them believe, and you get stuck in the mud.
This is the very nature of the tournament itself. This is why people who don’t watch this sport all year suddenly tune in : Because it makes no sense — why should Purdue play so scared against a team— and because that senselessness is incredibly compelling. Does that make these 40 minutes of basketball mean anything more, in the grand scheme of things? Does it have something larger to say? Meh. I’m not so sure.
This brought me to a far more prosaic thought, having seen one of these upsets happen in person and now having seen another from afar: If you’re vulnerable, you’re vulnerable. If there’s a fairly recognizable glitch in your operation, it might cause a problem across 40 minutes of basketball on one particular night.
Virginia didn’t have DeAndre Hunter, and its offense inherently limited possessions, not to mention at least fractionally reducing the potential to blow teams out. Vulnerabilities. Purdue started two true freshman guards. Vulnerability. In a much larger sample, the Cavaliers’ offense and the Boilermakers’ callow backcourt were not fatal flaws. They were the reality all season, and they were No. 1 seeds anyways. They were, however, issues when there was no coming back from them.
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