Dear Purdue, I Apolo… (sorry, choking on crow)

It’s been a great weekend. Tremendous weather here in NYC. Celebrating some milestones with the wife. And, of course, taking in the glory of the Madness. Yes, the drama seems to have in part returned to what had become a rather ho-hum affair the past few Marches. I’ve got plenty to talk about, particularly about a squad hailing from Tompkins County New York. However, I’ve got one item to hit first. I’d like to formally apologize to the Purdue Boilermakers.

You see, I was one of the gabillion folks who’d largely written off Matt Painter’s bunch after Robbie Hummel went down late in the season. I even went out of my way to poke a bit of fun at the Boilermakers after they threw up a first half 11-spot in a blowout loss to Minnesota in the Big Ten tournament just over a week ago. At the time I joked that such a loss would obvioulsy do a lot for their psyche heading into the Big Dance. Maybe it did.

Purdue has come into the tourney and calmly gone about their business. They dispatched of a Siena team so many pundits claimed was clearly better than a Hummel-less Boilermakers squad. Now, today, they battled back from multiple deficits to take down Texas A&M in OT. I owe Purdue an apology. This was it. Moving on…