Northwestern Wildcats at Purdue Boilermakers

Swanigan leads No. 23 Purdue to rout of No. 25 Northwestern

Perhaps the transformation will come in time to make a Big Ten title push.

Edwards scored 17 points and knocked down a season-high five 3-pointers, leading the Boilermakers to an 80-59 rout over No. 25 Northwestern.

"I was just being confident and having fun," Edwards said after his best game since mid-December. "I just played hard and didn't even think about it, just playing the way I know how to play."

If Edwards keeps having this much fun, opponents certainly won't because of Purdue's one-two punch.

Purdue diced up the conference's best 3-point defense by going 9 of 14 in the first half and finishing 12 of 23. Over the last three games, the Boilermakers (18-5, 7-3) are 37 of 69 from beyond the arc (53.6 percent).

"The 3-point shooting was certainly the story of the game in the first half," Wildcats coach Chris Collins said. "They're a very good team and they got us tonight."

The Wildcats' six-game winning streak in conference play ended on a night when they were without Scottie Lindsey, their leading scorer. He stayed home because of the flu and will have some extra time to recuperate while Northwestern has an open weekend.

Without Lindsey, Northwestern wasn't the same.

Bryant McIntosh returned to his home state and finished with 22 points but was the only Wildcats player to reach double figures. Northwestern finished with its second-lowest scoring total of the season.

Purdue took control with a 12-0 run midway through the first half, extended the lead to 45-23 at halftime and pushed the margin to 26 early in the second half.

The Wildcats couldn't get closer than 14 after that.

"When Vince Edwards made the shots, that opened things up," Purdue coach Matt Painter said. "And we needed Vince to have some positive reinforcement."

BIG PICTURE

Northwestern: The Wildcats came up one win short of matching the longest Big Ten winning streak in school history. But without Lindsey, perhaps that should have been expected. While a road loss to a ranked team without their best player shouldn't hurt their NCAA Tournament cause, it could knock the Wildcats out of next week's AP Top 25 poll .

BOUNCE-BACK KIDS

The Boilermakers have not lost consecutive games this season. In fact, they didn't lose two in a row during the 2015-16 regular season, either. The last time Purdue dropped two straight regular-season games was March 2015, at Ohio State and Michigan State.

NO PANIC

Collins didn't sound too worried about the loss.

"This is just a hard building and a great place to play," he said, reminding people not to overreact about a team that is 4-2 in conference road games. "If you get a deficit, it's hard to climb out of it."

UP NEXT

Northwestern: Returns home to host in-state rival Illinois next Tuesday.

Purdue: Visits No. 17 Maryland on Saturday for its second straight game against a ranked foe.

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More AP college basketball: www.collegebasketball.ap.org and https://twitter.com/AP-Top25 .

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