The Golden Eagles tangle with the Boilermakers for the sixth time since 2018.
Name: Purdue University
Location: West Lafayette, Indiana (which apparently is the most densely populated city in the state), conveniently located across the Wabash River from Lafayette, Indiana.
Founded: 1869
Enrollment: 58,009 as of Fall 2024, with 44,170 undergraduates. FUN FACT: Purdue’s student body is 59% male this year, which I presume as a lot to do with the STEM reputation that the school has. Hey, ladies is engineers too, but there’s a reason why there’s a heavy outreach to young girls and women to get them into STEM, y’know?
They Have A Drum: The Purdue marching band has a bass drum that stands 10 feet tall while on the cart that takes four people to move it. There is actually a physical fitness test to determine whether or not you’re prepared to move the thing around on its cart. They claim it to be the world’s largest drum, but in 2013, the Indianapolis Star proved that to be a lie and not by a little bit, either.
Nickname: Boilermakers
Why “Boilermakers?” They came by it honest, to be fair. Being called the Boilermakers for their trouncing of Wabash College is basically naming a team the “Runaway Train” in modern-day lingo.
Feels like a good time for a song: The Wabash Cannonball isn’t necessarily about Purdue, but it’s a song about a train and it’s named Wabash, so there’s a lot of familiar territory here. And yes, we’re going with Johnny Cash.
Mascot: The Boilermaker Special, a train. No, I’m not kidding, that’s their official mascot. CHOO CHOO, Y’ALL. You can ride the train, for free, on Friday afternoons before home football games.
Wait, What’s With The Guy In The Hat With The Hammer? That is Purdue Pete, who has been a part of campus since 1940, just like The Boilermaker Special, but has only been a physical performer at events since 1956.
The Grand Prix: As one might expect for a school with a fine history of engineering, they have a yearly go-kart race that has been running since 1958. Student teams build karts every year from scratch and compete on a — no, I’m not joking — million dollar track with what is regarded as “one of the most advanced computer scoring systems anywhere in the world of kart racing.”
Notable Alumni: Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom are amongst the 23 astronaut alumni; Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, known for successfully ditching into the Hudson River; Robert C. Baker, the inventor of the chicken nugget; Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki concept, without which this list of alumni would not be possible; “Not That” BJ Penn, former Assistant Secretary of the US Navy; comedian Jim Gaffigan, which will make this game incredibly awkward in the Gaffigan household considering Jeannie Gaffigan is a Marquette alumnus; Harold Gray, the creator of the Little Orphan Annie comic strip; Academy Award winning screenwriter Callie Khouri; Orville m’f’n’ Redenbacher; Ruth Siems, the inventor of Stove Top stuffing; the other basketball playing JaJuan Johnson; Brian Lamb, the founder of C-SPAN; Missouri basketball coach Cuonzo Martin; David E. Nichols, expert on psychedelics; Basketball Hall of Fame coach John Wooden; NFL quarterback Drew Brees; SEC on CBS broadcaster Gary Danielson; award winning adult film actress Bree Olsen, Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram; Pixar animator and director Bob Peterson, best known as the co-director of Up and the voice of Dug in said movie; professional wrestler Dick The Bruiser, UFC Hall of Famer Stephan Bonnar; and finally, Eric Justin Toth, the man who replaced Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
Cricket Spitting: Every year, Purdue hosts something called “Spring Fest.” It’s apparently hosted by the College of Agriculture — they’re a Big Ten school and are probably required by conference charter to have an Ag school — and any part of Purdue University that submits a planning form and has an event/exhibit with a family friendly educational message can participate. Apparently, one of the most popular parts of Spring Fest is the Bug Bowl. The 2019 calendar included an insect petting zoo, a bee exhibit, a demonstration of how insects can be used as food, and so on.
Since 1996, part of the Bug Bowl has been a Cricket Spitting contest. Now, if you’re wondering how you train a cricket to spit, you can let that thought pass through your head. We’re talking about humans spitting frozen crickets. There are very serious rules involved, and the world record for cricket spitting is 32 feet, 0.5 inches, held by Dan Capps, who hails from Madison, Wisconsin. Please read this Salon article for more on cricket spitting and Mr. Capps.
Last Season: Pretty good. Purdue ended up 34-5 overall with a 17-3 record in Big Ten play, which gave them the regular season title by three games over Illinois. They did get knocked out of the conference tournament in the semifinals by Wisconsin, but they recovered to go all the way to the national championship game one year after losing to Fairleigh Dickinson in the first round of the NCAA tournament. They ran into the buzzsaw that was UConn last year, and ended up on the losing end, 75-60.
Final 2023-24 KenPom.com Ranking: #3
Final 2023-24 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #3
2024-25 Preseason Poll: The Big Ten doesn’t release a preseason poll with a predicted order of finish for their teams. However, the Indianapolis Star said, “hey, screw you guys,” on that topic and they’ve been doing one ever since the league stopped. The point of the story is the 33 people who voted in that collectively placed Purdue 1st out of 18 teams.
So Far This Season: The Boilermakers have started off the year 4-0, but it is their most recent victory that’s particularly notable for our proceedings here. Right as #2 Alabama might have started to think they had a chance of getting a win in Mackey Arena, Purdue popped off a 13-0 run that left them up 72-65 with just over eight minutes to go. All told, Purdue held the Crimson Tide to just three points for about six minutes, and that was that in the Boilermakers’ 87-78 victory.
Current KenPom.com Ranking: #12
Current BartTorvik.com Ranking: #14
Returning Stat Leaders
Points: Braden Smith, 12.0 ppg
Rebounds: Braden Smith, 5.8 rpg
Assists: Braden Smith, 7.5 apg
Current Stat Leaders
Points: Trey Kaufman-Renn, 18.0 ppg
Rebounds: Trey Kaufman-Renn & Braden Smith, 6.3 rpg
Assists: Braden Smith, 9.5 apg
Bigs? NO MORE ZACH EDEY, THAT’S FOR SURE. He plays for the Memphis Grizzlies now.
No Daniel Jacobsen either, as the 7’4” freshman fractured his tibia in Game #2 of the season. He put up 13 points, seven rebounds, and three blocks in 25 minutes in the opener. 7’2” sophomore Will Berg has been starting in his absence, and he’s putting up 3.7 points and 3.3 rebounds over the past three games. Berg played just nine minutes against Alabama, so we’ll see what happens with the lineup against Marquette.
6’11” freshman Raleigh Burgess has played in all four games this season, but he’s averaging just 7.3 minutes per game. Even with Berg not playing much against the Tide, Burgess was only on the floor for four minutes in that one. It seems that 6’10” senior Caleb Furst ended up being the beneficiary of the available minutes, as he played a season high 13 minutes against Alabama. He put up six points and two rebounds.
Trey Kaufman-Renn is 6’9” tall and listed at 230 pounds. You can see that he’s putting up some numbers both scoring and rebounding for Purdue this season, but I don’t know if he fits the bill as the actual 5 man for the Boilermakers. He does only have four three-point attempts all season, so maybe he does.
Shooters? Well, let’s put it this way. Fletcher Loyer went 3-for-5 against Alabama, and that 60% night BROUGHT HIS SEASON LONG SHOOTING PERCENTAGE DOWN to 70.6%. the 6’5” junior shot nearly 38% in his first two seasons combined, and he was hitting 44% last season. Loyer is obviously going to cool way, way, WAY down at some point this season, and it’s going to be up to Marquette to make that happen as soon as possible.
Myles Colvin is right behind Loyer in terms of attempts per game at 4.0 a night, and he’s “only” hitting 43.8% right now. He didn’t play much last year, but the 6’5” Indianapolis native found time to hit 41% of his 58 long range attempts as a freshman. Braden Smith is close to getting half of his 12.3 attempts per game from behind the three-point line, and thus his 5.5 attempts per game lead the team. Smith connects 36% of the time this year after putting up 38% and 43% as a freshman and sophomore respectively. CJ Cox is coming off a 3-for-3 night against Alabama, but that moved the freshman from Massachusetts up to 4-for-8 on the year.
Head Coach: Matt Painter, in his 20th season as Purdue head coach and 21st as a Division 1 head coach thanks to one year at Southern Illinois. He has a record of 451-203 with Purdue and 476-208 overall.
What To Watch For: This will be the third time — and the third straight season — that Shaka Smart and Matt Painter lock horns, and it’s going to be an entirely different outing that the first two encounters. The November 22 game came three games into Zach Edey’s ascension to the most dominant big man in the country, and he handed out 20 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in a 75-70 win at Mackey Arena in that one. Last November, the two teams butted heads in the title game of the Maui Invitational. While Marquette may have been able to steal from the game plan from the year before, it appears to have not really mattered relative to defending Edy. The big Canadian put up 28 points and 15 rebounds as Purdue escaped with a 78-75 victory.
Now whatever Marquette learned about playing Purdue for the past two seasons has to go straight out the window because, in the words of Rick Pitino, Zach Edey is not walking through that door. In fact, it certainly seems like Purdue is having a hard time finding guys to spend time in the middle after freshman starter Daniel Jacobsen broke his leg early in the second game of the year. It seems like they’re going a little bit on the small side, as the three guys at 6’10” or taller who played against Alabama tallied up just 26 minutes. It’s an entirely different Purdue team, although I’m sure Shaka Smart will be able to point to a big bag of things that are ultimately the same in how Matt Painter’s operating.
On one hand, that’s good news for Marquette. Having to deal with Yet Another Giant Purdue Big Man would not be fun, and this moves the entire operation into something of a level playing field in the front courts. On the other hand, MU has to start their scouting report over from scratch, which is a different kind of not fun.
Purdue is an excellent three-point shooting team as outlined above, just like they were last year and just like they were in two of the last three seasons. Hey, guess what: The team that lost to Fairleigh Dickinson was a bad three-point shooting team! Did that rear its head in that game? SURE DID. Anyway, they’re great at it now, connecting on 46% as a team, but they’re clearly due for a little bit of a cooldown at least from Braden Smith. Interestingly, even with the tumult at the 5 spot, Purdue isn’t shooting a lot of three-pointers. They’re at less than 40% of their total shots from behind the arc, and that’s right on target with the last five Purdue teams. It’s a little weird that they don’t shoot more when they’re so good at it right now, but as a fan of the team trying to slow them down, I think this is a great offensive tactic by Matt Painter and I think they should build the entire train out of two-point attempts.
On the defensive side of things, Purdue doesn’t force turnovers and they don’t let you get to the line. These things are not changes and they stick to the general trend of the last several Matt Painter teams. That’s terrific news for Marquette as they’re great at not turning the ball over on offense and they kind of struggle to get to the line. MU has an extremely high offensive efficiency considering the fact that they do very little scoring with the clock stopped, so Purdue not giving up those chances won’t really affect the Golden Eagles all that much. Is that part of the reason why MU has kept it close with Purdue the last couple of years while the Boilermakers were one of the best teams in the country for two years straight? At the very least, it’s not hurting one damn bit.
As you would expect for a team that’s trying to figure out how to play without both Zach Edey and his 7’4” replacement, Purdue does not rebound the ball well on either end of the court. That’s a thing that they were doing pretty damn well with Edey in the lineup, but this year’s version hasn’t figured that part of things out yet. In fact, you could probably argue the fact that Braden Smith being tied for the team lead is evidence that Purdue has a legitimate rebounding problem. Smith is listed at 6’0”, which is the second fakest height in sports, falling right behind 5’11”, aka “Nobody’s going to believe that you’re 6 feet tall, so we’re not going to say that.” In any case, it’s not the most ideal situation for them to have Smith averaging over six rebounds per game to tie for the team lead right now. Yes, Smith was second on the team behind Edey last year with over five caroms per contest, but there’s a difference between “getting the rebounds Edey missed” and “actually, our entire situation depends on you doing this” when the guy in question miiiiiiiiiight not actually be six feet tall. The point of the story is this: Marquette has not been a great rebounding team so far this season, and this game might be a spot where the Golden Eagles can start dictating terms of a physical nature on the glass.
All Time Series: NOT GREAT. Marquette is 1-11 against Purdue all-time after losing to the Boilermakers in the Maui Invitational championship game a year ago. The most memorable game in series history came back in 1969. MU lost that encounter in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament on a last second shot by Rick Mount.