Welp ...

 ... which is about all that's left to say now that Purdue went down like everyone else last night, flattened by the relentless steamroller that is UConn.

The Huskies won the national title in a 75-60 game that wasn't really in doubt after halftime, and, listen, it wasn't because the Boilermakers didn't do what they could do. It's just that UConn did what it could do, and does, like, pretty much all the time.

Oh, Zach Edey got his points, 37 of them, but the Huskies cared very little about that. The game plan was to silence everyone else around him, and they were so good at doing that the Edeyettes barely uttered a whisper.

A team that needed a flurry of threes even to have a chance not only made just one, it barely managed to get off any as UConn's length, speed and aggressiveness made the three-point line a no-let-fly zone. The Boilers managed just seven shots from the arc --18 fewer than Purdue hoisted against North Carolina State in the national semifinal, and three fewer than it made against the Wolfpack.

The Huskies virtually erased Purdue's best shooter, Fletcher Loyer, who scored no points in 30 minutes and was so fiercely harassed he managed just five shots. That was the story pretty much everywhere else, too; aside from Edey's 37 and a sparkling 12-point, eight-assist, one-turnover night from Braden Smith, no one else wearing Purdue colors scored more than five points. The Boilers got just two points from their bench, a source of strength for them all season.

In other words: UConn was damn good. Best team in America, and not by a little.

And Purdue?

Damn good, too.

That the Boilermakers fell a W short of their first national title diminishes very little what they managed to do this season, a landmark one by any measure. Big Ten regular-season champs for the second straight year. Most wins (34) in program history. First Final Four appearance in 44 years; first title-game appearance, and second ever, in 55 years.

And, oh, yeah: Best Performance By A Purdue Team In Wiping The Sneers Off A Lot Of Faces.

Hard to fathom now, but before March began there were a scattering folks saying right out loud that if Matt Painter didn't make the Final Four with this team, Purdue should think about moving on from him. Because, you know, a program makes its bones in March, and Painter was a March choker of the first orde-

Oops. Guess not.

Guess not, because Purdue vaporized its first two opponents in the Madness by a combined 67 points, and on it went. Its average margin of victory on the way to the title game was 19.6 points. It didn't always play well, but it played hard -- where have we heard that one before, Gene Keady? -- and with a smoldering focus that never once wavered.

Problem was, so did UConn.

Problem was, the Huskies were on a mission, too, trying to become the first program in 17 years to win back-to-back titles, and only the third program to do so in 25 years.

Duke, Florida, UConn. That's your list.

So there was a large pile of history squeezed into last night, and not all of it belonged to the Huskies. A good chunk belonged to Purdue, too, and there were echoes of Rick Mount in '69 in it, and of Joe Barry Carroll and the gang in '80, and of all those granite-nosed Keady teams that in a sense taught this one how to play the game. And then sat back and watched that team take Purdue to the very brink.

Speaking of which, Keady was in the arena last night, because of course he was.

He sat there with that legendary bulldog jaw jutted out a mile -- smaller, at 87, than we remember, if not diminished -- and a Purdue cap jammed down to his eyes. And when he lifted it, you could see something else: A "P" cut or stenciled or whatever into the back of his head.

Here's to the man. And here's to a basketball team that gave him, and every Boiler Up soul in America, the ride of their lives.