WATCH: Keisei Tominaga game-high 19 points beats #1 ranked Purdue and Zach Edey
With the college football season ending Monday, college basketball took center stage Tuesday — and immediately saw its top two teams suffer upsets at the hands of unranked opponents.
No. 1 Purdue fell at Nebraska 88-72, while No. 2 Houston lost its first game of the season at Iowa State 57-53.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, it was the first time since Feb. 6, 2016, that the top two teams in the AP men’s college basketball poll lost to unranked opponents on the same day, and only the eighth time in the poll’s history.
The Boilermakers entered Tuesday on a seven-game winning streak, including victories over Arizona, Illinois and Alabama. But Nebraska matched them shot for shot in the first half and finished the opening period on a 13-0 run to lead by 11 at halftime.
Purdue cut Nebraska’s lead to one within the first six minutes of the second half, but the Cornhuskers immediately responded with a 14-2 run to take their biggest lead of the game with 11:53 remaining. Purdue wouldn’t get closer than six points the rest of the game, and Nebraska finished on an 11-2 run.
“That was the difference in the game,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said of Nebraska’s halftime lead. “We had a couple good fights there in the second half to where pulled within single digits and one time we got it to two, then they pushed it right back to double digits.”
The Cornhuskers shot 14-for-23 from 3-point range as a team, with seven players making a shot from behind the arc. Keisei Tominaga led the way with 19 points, while Rienk Mast had 18.
It was Nebraska’s first win over an AP No. 1 team since Feb. 6, 1982, and its fourth such win in program history. The first came March 3, 1958, under coach Jerry Bush, grandfather of current coach Fred Hoiberg.
“It doesn’t get much bigger than this one, the No. 1 team, the reigning national player of the year,” Mast said. “I just see that as a challenge and luckily, the shots were going in in the beginning and gave the team a little spark and everybody started believing.”
Tuesday marked the fourth time in the past two seasons that a No. 1-ranked Purdue team has lost to an unranked opponent. Last season, the Boilermakers fell to Rutgers and Northwestern. Earlier this season, they again lost at Northwestern.
Purdue becomes just the second team in AP poll history to lose multiple games as No. 1 to unranked opponents in consecutive seasons, the other being North Carolina in 1985-86 and 1986-87, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
Related Posts
About The Author
