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The Big Ten had two games on Wednesday night and both featured teams hoping to move near the top of the conference standings on the road in challenging environments. Iowa traveled to face Purdue and Minnesota hosted arch-rival Wisconsin.
Let’s take a look at what happened.
Game of the Night:
-Purdue Boilermakers 104, No. 17 Iowa Hawkeyes 68
Ok, this wasn’t really a good “game,” but it still deserves this spot in our recap on account of its surprising income. We expected this to be a close battle between a rolling Iowa team and a Purdue squad that’s really dangerous at home. Instead, Purdue put an absolute beatdown on Iowa, cruising to a 104-68 win.
With the win, Purdue now sits at 13-10 overall and suddenly has some renewed excitement. The Boilermakers are still clearly dangerous at home and have won three of the team’s last four games. Perhaps Purdue can use this game to build momentum heading into a massive showdown with arch-rival Indiana on the road on Saturday.
For Iowa, there’s not much to say here. The Hawkeyes clearly aren’t a bad team given how they’ve played earlier in the year, but this was an absolute no show. Iowa was absolutely run off the floor in this one from start to finish. This is the type of game where you throw out the tape and try to move forward. Iowa will do that on Saturday at home against Nebraska.
The Rest:
-Minnesota Golden Gophers 70, Wisconsin Badgers 52
This one looked pretty competitive on paper and it largely went down that way. Minnesota ended up winning by a comfortable margin, but the game was certainly competitive for segments. Regardless, Gopher fans will take it as Minnesota improved to 12-10 overall and 6-6 in league play with the win.
Minnesota will hope to keep things rolling on Saturday on the road against Penn State while Wisconsin will hope to get back on track on Sunday at home against Ohio State.