Purdue led by 12 at halftime, out-rebounded Valparaiso 46-37 and made 27 of 32 free throws. It still lost 83-80 in double overtime Friday night at Mackey Arena, which makes the 0-2 Boilermakers a clean test case for anyone who believes a game is decided by its last shot.

Justus McNair’s 25-foot three at the final buzzer will carry the highlight value. The box score points somewhere else.

What did the Purdue shooting numbers look like?

Purdue shot 24 of 64 from the field, 37.5%, and 5 of 28 from three, 17.9%. Valparaiso made 33 of 71, so the Boilermakers finished nine made baskets behind despite leading at the break and winning both the free-throw and rebounding columns.

Start with the three-point line. Five makes in 28 tries means Purdue missed 23, roughly four of every five. The lead came early (as many as 15 or 16 points) and stood at 32-20 at halftime.

The free-throw line is the part that should have rescued it. Purdue made 27 of 32 (84.4%) while Valparaiso made 10 of 16. That is a 17-point edge from the stripe, plus nine extra rebounds, and Purdue lost anyway. Every column that usually protects a favorite went Purdue’s way except the one that counts shots from the floor.

Who carried Valparaiso and Purdue?

Rakim Chaney carried Valparaiso with 35 points on 14-of-22 shooting, eight rebounds and six assists, with no turnovers in 41 minutes, before fouling out. Daniel Jacobsen answered for Purdue with 28 points and 10 rebounds. McNair added 17 points across 44 minutes, plus the shot that ended it.

Chaney scored 15 of Valparaiso’s 20 first-half points. That leaves five points from everyone else on his roster in the half, and the Boilermakers still led by 12. Chaney then forced the second overtime with a three at the buzzer after rebounding his own missed free throw.

McNair’s contribution came in two pieces. His pullup jumper with 1:03 left in regulation sent the game to overtime. In the second extra period, with the score tied at 80 and 4.4 seconds left, he took the inbound pass in the backcourt, dribbled to the right wing and let it go over a defender.

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For Valparaiso, the night carried weight beyond one result. It was the first true road win over a top-25 team in program history, and it moved Valparaiso to 2-0 under coach Roger Powell, a former Gonzaga assistant. Purdue lost to Gonzaga on Monday, so the Boilermakers have now dropped games to a ranked team and to a coach with Gonzaga on his résumé.

Purdue had its own big numbers. Jacobsen shot 9 of 13, Cox added 13 points and 12 rebounds, and Harris scored 11. Jacobsen has 50 points across the two losses now, 22 against Gonzaga and 28 here, so the scoring was there.

Is 0-2 a real hole for a ranked Purdue team?

Yes, by the calendar. Purdue lost 78-72 to No. 15 Gonzaga on Monday in Las Vegas, then lost at home to a Valparaiso team picked fifth in the Missouri Valley’s preseason poll. The 0-2 start is the program’s worst in roughly 50 years.

The strongest defense of Purdue is variance. Five of 28 from three is the kind of night that rarely repeats, the Gonzaga loss came against a ranked team by six points, and a contested 25-footer at the buzzer is a shot nobody can defend any better than that.

Fair, up to a point. Valparaiso made only 7 of 27 from three itself (25.9%), so the visitors did not win it from beyond the arc. The rest is arithmetic: Valparaiso made 26 two-pointers to Purdue’s 19. That seven-basket gap came in the shot a ranked home team is supposed to control.

That is why I read the loss as Purdue’s, not McNair’s. The Boilermakers had the lead, the line and the glass, and still lost. Valparaiso’s last win in this series came on Dec. 22, 1965, a 114-96 game, and Purdue had won the previous 10 meetings. Ending a streak that old takes more than one shot. It takes the other team losing a 12-point lead first.

Early-season losses like this one tend to get filed under chaos. Opening night already produced a run of results that ran against the rankings, and Friday fits the pile. The difference is that Purdue’s game had a visible cause. A team that shoots 37.5% and leaves a 12-point lead on the floor has given its opponent a way in, and that reads less like luck than like a pattern in one game.

Purdue is 0-2 because it made five threes in 28 tries and could not hold a halftime lead. The buzzer-beater only picked the time.