There was only one game tonight with Purdue hosting Ohio in a game they needed to help get things back up and running as conference season quickly approaches. Luckily for Purdue, they played considerably better on Thursday night against their MAC opponent.

Let’s take a look at what happened Thursday.

Game of the Night

Purdue Boilermakers 95, Ohio Bobcats 67

After a quick back and forth over the first few minutes, Purdue opened up a sizable lead on a 17-0 run, pushing the score to 27-7. The Bobcats slowly cut the lead down to nine, trailing 34-43 with 2:29 to go, before Purdue opened it back up to 13 with a couple of three pointers.

The second half saw Purdue return to their early first half form, with the Boilermakers quickly pushing the lead to 20 plus and cruising down the stretch against Ohio.

It wasn’t a huge surprise that the Bobcats couldn’t keep up considering Purdue’s offensive effort tonight. On the night the Boilermakers shot 56.7% from the field and made 48.3% of their 29 three pointers. Carsen Edwards once again led the team in scoring with 30 points, while Ryan Cline added 19 points and hit five of eight from beyond the arc. The game also marked the first start of the season for Evan Boudreaux, who got the starting spot over Matt Haarms.

“Matt really had more energy when he came off the bench last year and we don’t really play him much more this year than we did last year. I didn’t realize that till I watched the tape,” said Purdue head coach Matt Painter when discussing utilizing Haarms from the bench.

Tonight’s game was also clearly the best performance so far for freshman Eric Hunter Jr., who scored 13 points on 5 of 6 shooting. In the prior ten games Hunter had shot 3-26 from the field over 124 minutes. Hunter was capable of scoring at will at the high school level and Purdue will likely need his playmaking ability down the stretch to take some of the burden off of Carsen Edwards.

The win was a nice return to form for Purdue, who will host Belmont on the 29th before starting Big Ten play against Iowa in early January.