No. 1 Purdue Closing In On Best Start Ever
Matt Painter’s No. 1-ranked Boilermakers are on the verge of school history.
Purdue, now 11-0 overall, needs just three consecutive wins to match its best start to a season ever (the last time the Boilermakers were 14-0 was in 2009-10 when Robbie Hummel, E’Twaun Moore, JaJuan Johnson, Chris Kramer, Lewis Jackson and Keaton Grant went 29-6 and won a Big Ten title).
Tonight Purdue returns to Mackey Arena to host 3-7 New Orleans for a 9 p.m. ET tip, a game that will be televised on ESPNU.
Keep in mind, just three previous Purdue teams have started a season 12-0.
The Boilermakers will also be looking to extend the nation’s longest nonconference regular-season winning streak to 23 (that’s the largest by nine games).
After the Boilermakers host the Privateers, they will entertain 2-7 Florida A&M on Dec. 29 to conclude the regular-season nonconference portion of their schedule.
As you would expect, Purdue will be huge favorites in its next two games.
If it wins both, it would enter its Jan. 2 home game against Rutgers 13-0. You might recall the Scarlet Knights upset top-ranked Purdue last December in New Jersey on a half-court buzzer beater shot by Ron Harper Jr. That was the last time Purdue and Rutgers faced one another so no doubt payback will be on the minds of the Boilermakers.
Last week Purdue was ranked No. 1 in the AP Top 25 poll. This is the second straight year Purdue has been voted No. 1, becoming the first Big Ten program since Indiana (1974-75, 1975-76) to be ranked No. 1 in consecutive seasons. Last season was the first time ever Purdue’s program earned a No. 1 ranking.
Tonight will also mark the first time a No. 1-ranked Boilermaker team has played in Mackey Arena. So far, they’ve had three games when they were the top-ranked team – last year at Rutgers and against NC State in Brooklyn, and this season against Davidson in Indianapolis.
What’s remarkable is this is a Boilermaker team that started this season unranked. It took Purdue 34 days to rise from being unranked to being No. 1, that’s the quickest ever for an unranked team. In addition, Purdue is the seventh team to go from unranked to No. 1 in the same season.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Purdue has ascended to the mountaintop against a grueling schedule. Currently the Boilermakers own a nation’s-best four top-50 KenPom wins, all of them against teams ranked in the top 30 (Gonzaga, Duke, Marquette and West Virginia).
With all that said, what might be cause for concern is Purdue hasn’t been at the top of its game the last two outings – an overtime victory at Nebraska (which did win at top-10 Creighton on the road) and an eight-point win over Davidson.
National Player-of-the-Year frontrunner Zach Edey has been terrific each time he has stepped on the floor, but the Boilermakers struggled from deep against Nebraska and Davidson.
In games in which Purdue has shot 33 percent or better from beyond the arc, it has averaged 82.3 points per game. That number drops to 68 points per game when its three-point percentage is less than that as was the case against the Cornhuskers and Wildcats.
Against Davidson, Purdue had three players notch double-doubles – Edey, sophomore Caleb Furst and freshman Braden Smith. It’s just the third time in school history that has happened (the other two came last season and in 1977).
Still, it is remarkable with where the Boilermakers are when you consider they’re starting two freshmen guards, have no senior starters and only one in their 10-man rotation.
At 7-foot-4 Edey continues to be an unstoppable force. He’s not getting in foul trouble and proving he can play substantially more minutes than he did a year ago (31.8 vs. 19.0). He’s averaging 22.6 points per game (sixth nationally) and leading the country in rebounding with a staggering 13.9 boards.
Teams will continue at least double teaming the Purdue big man, daring the Boilermakers to knock down shots from the outside. If they can hit long-range shots at a decent clip this team becomes awfully hard to beat with such an imposing force inside. However, if it struggles from distance it is definitely vulnerable as Nebraska and Davidson proved.
But Purdue’s defense is much improved over a year ago and that’s been key in its most recent two victories. Currently the Boilermakers are ranked fifth in the Big Ten in defense, allowing 62.3 points per game.
A year ago, Purdue had the league’s second-best offense, averaging nearly 80 points per contest, but was seventh in D, allowing 68.4.
Skeptics are waiting for the Boilermakers’ youth and inexperience to catch up to them. The first three games in January will be even more telling as Purdue will face Rutgers then travel to Ohio State Jan. 5 and play Penn State in Philadelphia’s Palestra Jan. 8.
Purdue will not face a team that is currently ranked in the top 25 until Feb. 4 when it travels to Bloomington to face IU.
Could the Boilermakers be 23-0 when they hit the Assembly Hall hardwood? That seems like long shot at best, but with the way this team has started the season I guess anything is possible.
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