Here’s how to watch Thursday’s NCAA Tournament game between Purdue and Vermont online.
The first week of March Madness is here, and it’s time to get excited. The first four days of the Madness – with games tipping off every half hour or so – is one of the best times in sports. The Purdue Boilermakers, with NPOTY contender Caleb Swanigan, will take on the Vermont Catamounts on Thursday night in the tournament’s first round.
Purdue, after winning the Big 10 regular season title, was awarded a 4-seed in the NCAA Tournament’s Midwest Region. The team is led by Caleb Swanigan, who has been one of the best players in basketball this season. The versatile big man is comfortable from outside the arc – he’s swished 43.1 percent of his 3-point attempts on the year. But he does his heavy lifting inside, where he’s one of the best post players and rebounders in the game. Swanigan also does a fantastic job getting to the line, drawing a tremendous amount of fouls and hitting close to 80 percent of his attempts at the line.
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Paired with Isaac Haas and Vincent Edwards, the Boilermakers are one of the biggest teams in college basketball. That doesn’t stop them from hitting 3-pointers at a tremendous rate – their mark of 40.6 percent is 4th best in the country. Their perimeter players do an excellent job spotting up around the post play of Swanigan and Haas, and it helps power everything they do on that end.
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Date: Thursday, March 16
Start Time: 7:27 p.m. ET
Location: Milwaukee, WI
Venue: BMO Harris Bradley Center
TV: tru TV
Live Stream: CBS All-Access (subscriber-only, free 1 week trial available), NCAA March Madness Live
Standing in the way of Purdue’s tournament run are the underdog Vermont Catamounts. John Becker’s squad is good on both ends, posting top-70 efficiencies on both offense and defense. They’re led on offense by Anthony Lamb, a 6-foot-6 freshman power forward who excels at getting to and finishing at the rim. To pull the upset, they’ll need resident marksmen Kurt Steidl and Ernie Duncan to sink some 3’s – they’re the only high volume shooters from outside on the team.