Gophers postgame: Confusing last play goes in Minnesota's favor

Read my full game story on Minnesota's 62-58 win over Purdue at home here.

DeAndre Mathieu had just missed the front end of a 1-and-1 and the raucous crowd and gaggle of beat reporters trying to save their running stories probably all had the same thought:

Oh boy, here we go again.

There were 23 seconds left on the clock -- plenty of time for a hot-shooting Purdue to make a play.

The Boilermakers worked the ball into the paint, where forward Vince Edwards got it. The 6-foot-7 freshman started to go up with it when Walker's hand appeared to rake over the top. The ball tipped out of Edwards' hands and Andre Hollins wound up with the defensive rebound.

Then everyone sort of just froze. The crowd slouched. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something for about two seconds. Minnesota players later said they thought they heard a whistle.

"I don't know what it was," Hollins said. "But I looked at the ref and then I looked at everybody else and the ball was coming toward me so I just grabbed it."

"I just tried to get there and put my hands straight up," Walker said. "Luckily the ref didn't call a foul, I know sometimes they call that. But I feel like he just put the ball right in my hands and once he did that I just grabbed it."

Purdue (15-9; 7-4) coach Matt Painter said he was surprised that some call wasn't made.

"It was one of those bang-bang plays that could have gone either way," he said. "The one thing is did was it fooled all the players. Everybody stopped. Normally that's a pretty good tell-tale [sign] that something is there. I don't know if they thought it was a jump ball or a foul. I thought it was something, that's what I thought. I thought it was something. Something needed to be called right there.

"You rarely ever see it where everybody stops. And the crowd just got silent and nobody knew how to react to it and obviously as a coach when your guy shoots it you want the benefit of the doubt but you've got to be able to make a play right there. When you're on the road, you've got to be able to make that play."
Coach Richard Pitino called it a "weird" moment, but said he was proud of Walker, who ducked in on by Purdue center AJ Hammons with 33 seconds left in the Gophers' opener this year in West Lafayette.

"Well this time, Mo got a stop," he said. "So it was a little bit of redemption for Mo."

"They couldn't take this one from us after we've been on the wrong side of a lot of those calls at the end of the game," he said. "That would have definitely hurt."

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Mo Walker briefly left the game after being called for a foul in the first half, holding his right wrist. It was taped and he soon was back in action. "I turned to go up and someone came down with an elbow right on my wrist. It was kind of hurting but as the game went on I kind of stopped thinking about it."