• Braden Smith got he wanted on the last possession of the game, but couldn’t create magic in Michigan.
• Yes, Purdue acknowledged the foul discrepancy, but turned criticism inward for a loss it could have avoided.
• Purdue’s big three was efficient, but it didn’t get enough help.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Purdue basketball’s Braden Smith asked for charity when Michigan’s Danny Wolf stepped to the charity stripe with a chance to ice a victory Tuesday night. 

The Boilermakers trailed by two with six seconds remaining. They needed help, so what’s the harm in asking for some? 

“I said, ‘Give us one, just one,’ and he did,” Smith said of Wolf missing the front end of his double-bonus opportunity. “And then I said ‘Uh oh, if he gives us another one I’m going to go down and make it.’” 

Wolf obliged by missing the second as well. It left him a desperation running heave off one foot from 25 feet — one he said he made consistently shoot around.  When it sailed wide of the rim, the Wolverines had a 75-73 victory and sole possession of the Big Ten Conference lead. 

Whether that stands up as the decisive margin in the league championship race will be decided over a frantic final few weeks. Michigan State could also have jumped over the Boilermakers into a tie for first. Indiana, with a lame duck coach and a season long since having spiraled out of control, stunned the Spartans 71-67 in East Lansing. 

Purdue could not make enough championship plays. If it summons a championship response, it may still control its own destiny. 

Fortunes flip quickly in the Big Ten. Ask the Spartans, who 10 days earlier were undefeated in league play. They’ve lost three of four now and must play at Illinois this weekend before Purdue visits the Breslin Center on Tuesday. 

This Boilermaker home-and-home with Michigan provided its own testimony.

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Purdue ran the Wolverines out of Mackey Arena only 18 days earlier. It forced 22 turnovers — nearly four times as many as it committed. Held them to 6 of 29 3-point shooting and 0.90 points per possession. Built a 30-point lead with under four minutes to play and made a statement: The Big Ten championship still comes through West Lafayette. 

The chances of those conditions repeating Tuesday seemed unlikely at best. Teams generally play better at home. Calls tend to go their way.  

Home cooking? Perhaps. Ask around the Big Ten and you’ll find plenty of players who say they had their fill of that meal at Mackey Arena. 

“That’s something you’ve got to live with,” Furst said. “That’s life on the road. We knew that coming in — and especially in a game like this, going against a team of this caliber.”

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Trey Kaufman-Renn remains puzzled by the foul disparity. Smith too. They took a combined 40 shots and did not draw a single trip to the free throw line. (In Purdue’s six losses, Smith has attempted a total of six free throws — all against Ohio State, when he played only 30 minutes due to foul trouble. Go figure.) 

The 10 fouls called against Kaufman-Renn and Caleb Furst mattered — more than keeping both out of the game for stretches, and eventually for good. They contributed to an accumulation, of which Michigan took full advantage. It went 8 for 8 in one-and-one situations — four in each half. 

Purdue’s lone one-and-one chance came from freshman Raleigh Burgess. He came in with 16 free throw attempts over games which were decided by an average of 24.4 points. He went to the line with 58 seconds left Tuesday, trying to halve Michigan’s four-point lead. 

He missed the front end, Ruben Jones scored a put-back dunk against the Kaufman-Renn and Furst-less front line, and Purdue faced a six-point hole with 39 seconds to play. 

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So yes, the fouls mattered. Yes, the Boilermakers grumbled about them, to a varying extent, both on and off the record. 

The best reaction — the one which can still win them a Big Ten championship — was the amount of time they spent blaming the guys in black and gold instead of black and white. 

Kaufman-Renn called himself out for two big mistakes. He failed to rotate and get vertical on a late defensive assignment. Then he made an awkward pass in the paint which resulted in a turnover. He was called for his fifth foul trying to rebound on the other end. 

“I don’t think the game was lost from the officiating,” Kaufman-Renn said. “… We had our chances.” 

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Kaufman-Renn, Smith and Fletcher Loyer combined to score 61 points on 51 field goal attempts. Exactly the high-volume efficiency Painter wants and expects from his stars. 

The other six combined for 12 points on 4-of-18 shooting with no assists and five turnovers. Michigan’s bench outscored Purdue’s 21-0. In a two-point game with the lead in the Big Ten on the line, those numbers are significant, too. 

Purdue missed a handful of chances at the rim. It missed wide-open 3s in rhythm. It would love to have the final few minutes of the first half back, when Kaufman-Renn sat with two fouls and Michigan cut what had been an 11-point deficit down to two. 

Back on Jan. 24 at Mackey Arena, the Boilermakers fairly quickly eliminated any hope Michigan might have had of capitalizing down the stretch. Tuesday night on the road, they left the Wolverines exactly enough rope to pull themselves back into the lead and keep it.