Gold and Black Radio: No. 7 Purdue readies for No. 1 Michigan in a Mackey showdown
GoldandBlack.com’s Brian Neubert and host Derek Schultz break down one of the biggest games in Mackey Arena in years as No. 7 Purdue takes on No. 1 Michigan. Purdue is looking to beat a No. 1 team in Mackey for the first time in 46 years (1979 Michigan State and Magic Johnson).
ON PURDUE AS UNDERDOG (excerpt from Brian Neubert’s Three Thoughts Column)
You know what I sensed from the last two games from Purdue: Underdog energy. Maybe I’m imagining it, but contextualizing its showings lately in the fact that the Boilermakers are in the rare position of going into marquee matchups as the lower-ranked team, behind in the Big Ten standings and with the Collehe Basketball Take Complex throwing dirt on them, it makes sense.
It hasn’t been often that the Boilermakers have been in positions where the underdog hat might fit, and there is a fine line between being an underdog and just being desperate. But whatever the case may be, Purdue has kind of snuck up in the shadows again after that three-game losing streak inevitably changed the perception of the Boilermakers, who were the No. 1 team in the country coming into the season. “Nobody believed in us” mantras are often trash, but Purdue is in a spot here where, yeah …
It is a fundamentally healthy thing for us as teams, as humans, as professionals, as parents, as people, to get our butts kicked sometimes, and if that three-game losing streak brought something more out of Purdue to the point where they’re now better wired to scratch and claw, then good for them, I suppose. You’d rather not need losses to achieve that end.
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An opportunity may or may not have been lost in the process, but nevertheless, Purdue is a better team right now than it was when it played at UCLA. There’s no going back now on that first-half coma in the Indiana game, but what Purdue is showing right now is precisely the opposite of what it showed then.
Purdue seems to be peaking at the right time just in time for a crucial game in which it can credibly be viewed as the … underdog.
