By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

Two of the nation’s top point guards will match up in Iowa’s game at Purdue on Wednesday.

Their impacts, Iowa coach Ben McCollum said on Tuesday, are different.

Purdue’s Braden Smith and Iowa’s Bennett Stirtz are both on the watch list for the Wooden Award, but both have different effects on their respective teams.

Smith leads the nation with 9.8 assists per game to go with his 14.5 points per game. Stirtz leads the Hawkeyes in assists with 5.1 and in scoring at 17.6 points.

“I think probably the difference is the systems are different,” McCollum said. “I think theirs is a little more play heavy. I don’t think their coaches probably get enough credit for how good they are at setting people up, particularly their point guards and their ‘5’s. I mean, they’re elite at getting those people in positions to be able to accumulate a few assists, accumulate some points, and then those guys are great at being coachable and tough enough to be able to do those things.

“They’re kind of the epitome of what it means to be a college basketball player and a college basketball program. But from a point guard perspective, they’re not polar opposites, but just a lot more different than it seems from the outside, just because of the style of play.”

Smith, who has averaged 16.5 points and 6.5 assists in four games against Iowa in his career, has a lot of production around him. Three other Boilermakers — Fletcher Loyer (14 ppg), Trey Kaufman-Renn (13.3) and Oscar Cluff (11.9) — average in double figures in scoring.

“They’re built … they’ve got kind of perfect pieces,” McCollum said. “They’re just built so well, and they’re so well-coached offensively. Obviously they have their point guard, and then their bigs, and then they’re shooting with space. And so, you’ve got your primary playmaker, but a lot of it is designed through their plays, through their actions. And they’ve got a lot of them — they kind of leverage those big guys, and then they’re able to get threes off because of the leverage of those big guys, which makes it very difficult to defend.”

The Boilermakers, 15-1 overall and 5-0 in the Big Ten, are ranked fifth nationally. The Hawkeyes (12-4, 2-3) are coming off back-to-back losses for the first time this season and are starting a two-game swing through the state of Indiana — they play at Indiana on Saturday.

Iowa lost 70-67 at Minnesota last Tuesday, then fell 75-69 at home to Illinois on Sunday.

McCollum, who lost back-to-back games only once last season at Drake, knows what it’s going to have to take to stay out of a longer streak.

“There’s still a level of figuring out with your group how to win close games,” McCollum said. “You know, I think getting close is great, because that shows that you have enough fight, and you know you’re good enough to be able to stay in those kinds of games. But to win them is where you have to … last year we used the term, ‘Death by 1,000 paper cuts.’ You have to be the one that does all those little, tiny, tiny things, whether it’s making a few layups here or where we missed some scouting-report mistakes that are really simple stuff that just takes a little bit more effort. And that’s how you win those games.”

Photo: Purdue’s Braden Smith (3) has been a thorn against Iowa in the last two seasons. (Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire)