The fifth-seeded Purdue Boilermakers are taking on the Arkansas Little Rock Trojans in the NCAA Tournament. It will take a superhuman effort for the Sun Belt champion, Arkansas-Little Rock, to defeat the Boilermakers. Not only that, but the Trojans lost one game by more than six points this season and that was Big 12 tourney representative Texas Tech, 65-53. They are actually one of the better teams in the nation defensively (59.9 ppg).
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Purdue finished third in the Big Ten and won five in a row before falling to Michigan State 66-62 in the conference tournament championship.
“I’ll be there”, he said. Less than a year after being introduced as coach, he not only has guided that group to the NCAA tournament, but the Trojans are a popular upset pick in the 12-5 seed matchup against Purdue in the Midwest Regional.
“Me personally, I’ve been overlooked my whole life”, Beard said.
“We had a lot of players with a lot of different stories that was really impressive”, senior Roger Woods said.
“I don’t think we got it as much”, he said. “Chris Beard is a fantastic coach and we all love him”.
Twenty-nine wins and a Sun Belt tournament title later, Little Rock believes it has a chance to be this tournament’s Cinderella, starting with Thursday’s first-round game against No. 5-seed Purdue, after they arrived here in Denver wearing black hooded sweatshirts, the words “Why not us” silk screened on the back.
“We were big on real man-to-man kind of stuff”.
They will be put to the test again Thursday in the first round of the tournament against the Boilermakers, who are the biggest team in the NCAA this year with a pair of 7-footers in A.J. Hammons and Isaac Haas.
And because of the trust Beard built with his players soon after he arrived in Little Rock previous year, they believe any sort of game plan he implements can work.
“They are a tough team”, Purdue coach Matt Painter said of the Trojans. He even coached a semi-pro team before coming to Little Rock. All players can do is go out and take care of business.
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“Last Sunday in our championship game in the Sunbelt Conference, we were playing against a very well-coached team, Monroe, we had a lot of respect for”.
