Oscar Cluff had 17 points with 14 rebounds and No. 18 Purdue advanced to the Big Ten Conference championship game with a 73-66 semifinal victory over short-handed UCLA on Saturday in Chicago.
The No. 7-seed Boilermakers (26-8) earned the win over the sixth-seeded Bruins (23-11) behind two first-half runs as well as Cluff’s dominant play in the paint over the closing five minutes.
The victory avenged Purdue’s 69-67 loss on Jan. 20 at UCLA and gave the school a chance for its third conference tournament title on Sunday. No. 3 Michigan, the tournament’s top seed, awaits in the final. The Wolverines topped the host Boilers 91-80 on Feb. 17 in their only regular-season meeting.
Fletcher Loyer scored 14 points, Trey Kaufman-Renn totaled 12 points and 10 rebounds and Braden Smith had five points and nine assists.
The Boilermakers, who trailed for just 48 seconds, held a 37-26 rebounding advantage.
The Bruins were without top scorer Tyler Bilodeau, who injured his right knee in Friday’s 88-84 win over third-seeded Michigan State. Point guard Donovan Dent, who recorded the first triple-double in Big Ten tournament history on Thursday against Rutgers, left at the 9:46 mark of the first half with a calf injury.
Trent Perry scored 15 points with a career high-tying nine assists for UCLA while Xavier Booker scored 12 points. Eric Dailey Jr. notched 11 points, 10 rebounds and three assists while Skyy Clark recorded 10 points, four steals and three assists.
Purdue set the tone early with a 15-2 lead less than four minutes into the game behind Loyer’s second 3-pointer, Kaufman-Renn’s four points and a technical foul on Bruins coach Mick Cronin.
As the Boilermakers hit a significant cold spell, UCLA took off on a 15-2 run to knot the game at 17-17 as Booker and Dailey each tallied five points.
In a first half defined by runs, Purdue used a 9-0 stretch for a 26-17 lead while UCLA coped with the loss of Dent, who was scoring nearly 14 points per game and had been key to the Bruins’ late-season surge.
Ranked among the nation’s top five assist men at 7.5 per game, Dent (2 points, 1 assist in 10 minutes) rejoined his team on the bench in the final seconds of the first half but never returned to the game.
The Boilermakers increased a seven-point lead to 40-27 on a pair of Loyer 3-pointers in the first minute of the second half, but the Bruins gradually reeled them in. Clark’s steal and layup with seven minutes left, then his 3-pointer on the next possession, cut the lead to 58-57 with 6:14 remaining.
UCLA tied it 62-62 on Brandon Williams’ dunk with 3:41 left, but Purdue closed it out with an 11-4 run as Cluff scored six of the Boilermakers’ last seven points.
–Field Level Media
