Gold and Black Radio: Purdue hoops takes breather after Maryland blowout

In our Feb. 3, 2026 edition, host Derek Schultz and GoldandBlack.com Purdue men’s basketball expert Brian Neubert discuss No. 12 Purdue’s recent 30-point road win at Maryland and what the Boilermakers might do with six days’ rest before Saturday’s battle with Oregon.

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Takeaways from Purdue’s win over Maryland

PURDUE’S FLETCHER LOYER BREAKS OUT

This was always coming for Fletcher Loyer. He’s too good a shooter, too consistent in his approach to shooting and gets too many good looks in this Purdue offense.

He’s not going to shoot 70-percent from three the rest of the season, but this game was an un-needed reminder he’s not going to shoot 30 percent, either.

It was a struggling opponent in a non-competitive game, sure, but jumpers are jumpers and everything came up Loyer today.

One of his few slip-ups today was a missed free throw that Trey Kaufman-Renn rebounded and threw right back to Loyer for a three. He won for losing in that case. In another instance, he carried a six-point possession by making a three, while Maryland fouled Daniel Jacobsen under the basket. On the successive possession, Loyer passed out to Jacobsen for another three.

Why was this Loyer’s day? Mostly, he was due. But it also looked like Maryland was dedicating an extra body to clogging the paint, which put it at a numbers disadvantage on the back side. Further, turnovers and offensive rebounds are gold for three-point shooters, and Purdue fared well in both areas.

But mostly, he was due.

THE BIGGEST DEAL ON SUNDAY

Maryland isn’t good offensively. It’s not particularly skilled or savvy. But Kansas transfer David Coit can be electric if you let him plug in. Purdue didn’t.

A scoring guard with four 30-plus-point games to his name this season who put 43 on Penn State not long ago entered the final few minutes against Purdue with three points on three shots. He finished with eight, polishing his line a bit against deep reserves.

Coit’s only field goal of the first half: A mix-tape-ish James Harden step-back three over CJ Cox one on one.

Braden Smith was all over Coit when they matched up, and Cox and Gicarri Harris and Omer Mayer did their parts, as well. Purdue’s help against the dribble was there all day.

And notably, Purdue was not as active with its centers up top in ball-screen defense against Coit. They basically just dropped instead of hedging or the like. Whether that was a one-game, opponent-specific thing, we’ll see, but it worked on D and couldn’t hurt on the glass against a fairly rugged Maryland team.

SPEAKING OF RUGGED

Maryland’s objective was clear: Just beat the you-know-what out of them, make them call everything and try to get under Purdue’s skin. It worked for Buzz Williams at Texas A&M last season; now, not as much.

For one thing, they couldn’t get away with it, as the Terps were called for 19 fouls and lost big man Elijah Saunders after just 13 minutes. Daniel Jacobsen took some of the worst of it, but he and Oscar Cluff took their lumps when Maryland’s offense devolved into Solomon Washington iso’ing and more or less just throwing himself into them to get to the basket and draw fouls. And it wouldn’t be a Purdue game this season without somebody getting hit in the face. It was Kaufman-Renn today.

Purdue had to know how this was going to be, and the positive in it was that it was fazed. It didn’t seem to get drawn into any spats, it didn’t get called for anything retaliatory, didn’t gesture at the officials too much (though the whistle was agreeable) and didn’t lose its mind.

Purdue was consistent today. Its head was level. It played a full 40 minutes, most of it with a big lead and never really let up, never got dragged down to its opponent’s level.

That’s what a team this experienced is supposed to look like.