Northwestern Hosts No. 5 Purdue on Wednesday Night

NORTHWESTERN MEN'S BASKETBALL: GAME INFORMATION
DATE	Opponent	TIME	LOCATION	Watch	Live Stats
Wednesday, Feb. 16	Purdue	8 p.m. CT	Welsh-Ryan Arena Evanston, Ill.	Big Ten Network	Live Stats
Radio: WGN Radio 720 AM Social: Twitter: @NUMensbball \| Instagram: @numensbball

EVANSTON, Ill. - The Northwestern men's basketball team will look to defeat an AP Poll top-five ranked team for the ninth time in its history as No. 5 Purdue comes to Welsh-Ryan Arena for an 8 p.m. tip on Wednesday, Feb. 16. Dave Revsine (play-by-play) and Stephen Bardo (analyst) will call the action on BTN and Dave Eanet (play-by-play) and Billy McKinney (analyst) have the call on WGN 720 AM Radio.

The Wildcats (12-11, 5-9 B1G) last defeated an AP top-five team a season ago with a 79-75 victory over No. 4 Michigan State on Dec. 20, 2020. Boo Buie had a career-high 30 points with five threes. Before last year's win over the Spartans, NU's last top-five win came against Magic Johnson's No. 4 MSU squad in 1979.

Northwestern saw its three-game win streak come to a close and fell to No. 13 Illinois, 73-66, in its last game on Sunday afternoon. Ty Berry came off the bench to score a team-leading 16 points and hit four treys. The Cats also got a lift from Casey Simmons who dropped six points on 3-of-3 shooting and created a pair of breakaway buckets off steals.

Trailing by as many as 18 points, Northwestern utilized a 19-2 run in the second half to cut the deficit to one at the 6:16 mark. The defense turned Illinois over 20 times and generated 12 steals, its most in a Big Ten league game since March 8, 2012 against Minnesota (12).

Northwestern ranks fifth in the Big Ten averaging 8.2 made threes per game. When the Cats convert on eight or more 3-point attempts, they are 9-5 this season. Buie's made a team-best 51 treys this season with Pete Nance leading the squad hitting 41.4% of his long range attempts. NU is second nationally in assist turnover ratio (1.85).

Purdue holds a 130-48 all-time record in the series. The Boilermakers won this year's first meeting, 80-60, on Jan. 23. Buie scored a team-best 17 points. The Wildcats got as close as five points with 16 minutes left in the second half, opening the period on a 7-0 run. Purdue has won the last 10 meetings.

NU will travel to Minnesota at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 19 for its next game. The game will air on BTN.

Northwestern Hosts No. 5 Purdue on Wednesday Night

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Players Mentioned

Ty Berry

Boo Buie

Pete Nance

Casey Simmons

Northwestern University Athletics

Northwestern University Athletics