Shields

Tyrance

Gallegos

Nebraska Postgame Notes

*-Shavon Shields had a career-high 18 points, including a pair of 3-pointers. It bettered his previous best of 14 against Jacksonville State on Dec. 18. Shields also tied for game-high honors with eight rebounds while playing a career-high 37 minutes.

*-Jordan Tyrance set career highs in points (10), rebounds (7) and minutes on Wednesday. Tyrance had just one point (coming in the 2011-12 season) and five career rebounds before his effort tonight.

*-Nebraska falls to 0-5 in conference play for the second time in the last four seasons (also 2009-10)

*-Ray Gallegos was held to nine points, the first time in eight games he was not in double figures.

*- Nebraska committed a school-record two turnovers, bettering the mark of three set on three previous occasions (vs. Baylor, Feb. 10, 2010; vs. Maryland Eastern Shore, Jan. 3, 2009; vs. Iowa State, Feb. 16, 2002)

*-Dylan Talley had a career high four steals and matched his season high with eight rebounds. Talley also had three assists and has a 6-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio over the last three games

*-Nebraska shot just 33 percent and has shot 40 percent or less in all nine losses this season.

Nebraska Forward Shavon Shields

On what sparked the Huskers' second half rally "We started getting stops on defense. The first five minutes to the media time out, they were still killing us. Then we finally started getting stops, and when we started getting stops, we started running. Jordan Tyrance got a layup and Ray [Gallegos] got a layup. We started clicking and pushing it up."

On the Huskers' slow first half "Sad to say, we weren't ready to play. We just needed to be better than that in the first half. They were taking us out of everything we were doing. They were scoring, and they were just at the rim all the time."

On leading the team in scoring "I was hitting shots. I hit two threes early, and I think that kind of got me going. They were keying in on Ray [Gallegos] and Dylan [Talley] and when they're keying in on them, that opens up things for me to be more aggressive."

On if Ubel's absence affected the game "That would just be an excuse. We should've been ready to play from the tip."

On being close, but winless for the previous five games "It's tough, but we need to get over the hump sooner than later. Those close games, they really kill you. Looking back at it, we shot ourselves in the foot during every single one of them. We could've won those games. It hurts."

Purdue Coach Matt Painter

On the flow of the basketball game "I think there were a lot of runs during the game. I thought that we were pretty good for stretches and then they were pretty good during stretches. What it comes down to is getting off to a good start in the second half was really important to us because when Nebraska made their run we had such a significant lead at that time they only could get it to where it was two possessions. I think that really helped us in the second half, but getting A.J. Hammons established for us is pretty important. I think Ronnie (Johnson) played well too for our younger guys and D.J. Byrd missed good shots in the first half and then he got going with a couple of threes. Terone (Johnson) had some good plays there at the end; he got that and-one and a really nice floater that was really important."

On what Nebraska did defensively on their second half run / was he surprised "No not really, I don't think we did a good job of showing patience at that time, they put (David) Rivers on Hammons, and I thought Rivers did a good job of battling him because they gave weak side help, and we didn't put him into good positions to score the ball. I thought Nebraska picked up its pressure and the thing we didn't want to do was put Hammons on Rivers. We watched that match-up against Michigan State, and we knew A.J. Hammons couldn't handle him so there is no sense in trying to defend him. So we decided to put him on another offensive guy on the court at the time that wasn't number 15 or 24 because they are Nebraska's shooters.

On the young Purdue players, and if he thought he would be playing such a young team "We worry everyday. We are 9-8. There are days you see promise, there is days they are plugged into the computer and are ready to go. That is the product of their youth, because there is days they aren't. When you have a lot of them that is your problem, when you have one guy starting and maybe one guy coming off the bench, we just kind of throw them in the fire and let them learn from their mistakes. We are trying to learn and get better each game.

Source: University of Nebraska Athletic Dept.