The Shot, shot

 Ah, well. It was a nice dream, right?

Nice to imagine for a few days that Purdue-Fort Wayne -- regarded these days by West Lafayette as just another cute regional campus, all evidence to the contrary -- might actually swim in the same waters as the parent school. Purdue and Purdue-Fort Wayne, both in the NCAA Tournament? Beauty.

And then ...

And then one of basketball's home truths rose up to smack the Mastodons down.

That truth is if you live by the shot you die by the shot, and last night Purdue-Fort Wayne died. Northern Kentucky threw a suffocating matchup zone at the Mastodons, and the  Mastodons bricked their way out of the Horizon League tournament, shooting 29 percent and missing 17 of 20 from the 3-point arc, where they were one of the nation's best-shooting teams.

The final was 57-43, and it wasn't really that close. The 43 points were Purdue-Fort Wayne's lowest total of the season, and it was the first time the Mastodons had scored fewer than 50 points since November 19, when Minnesota beat them 78-49.

That was an astounding reversal for a team that had won 10 straight games and 16 of its last 20 coming into last night in Indianapolis. In that 10-game streak, the Mastodons never scored fewer than 70  points, and four times scored more than 80. In their final two regular-season games, they made 27 threes in 56 tries, a robust 48.2 clip.

Last night, they shot 15 percent from the arc. They missed all 12 of their 3-point attempts in the first half and didn't get one to drop until Damian Chong Qui finally hit with 17:37 to play.

And so down went the Mastodons' Shot, shot down by shots that wouldn't fall for the first time in more than a month.

Or something like that.