Does It Get Any Better Than Purdue-IU?
The greatest rivalry in college basketball renews at 4 p.m. tomorrow at IU’s Assembly Hall.
Saturday’s game marks the 216th meeting all-time between Purdue and Indiana; most played rivalry in the Big Ten.
And yes, I did say greatest, which it is. Don’t argue with me about Carolina and Duke, which was nothing prior to the 1980s. The IU-Purdue rivalry is more than a century old, dating to 1901, and isn’t contained to just one sport … it’s everything imaginable!
It’s what this state lives and dies for.
People who haven’t lived in Indiana or haven’t had ties to the rivalry don’t understand and never will.
I, on the other hand, have lived in Indiana my entire life and gone to countless Purdue-IU games in both Assembly Hall and Mackey Arena, and yes even one in the Hoosier Dome (in 2002 they only played once in Big Ten action so they played a nonconference game in Indy).
In my 20 years as editor of Gold & Black Illustrated (1991-2011), I covered every single one of the games in the intense rivalry.
There was nothing like Bob Knight versus Gene Keady and never will be. Those two were the fiercest of competitors and their teams mirrored their coaches’ personalities in terms of toughness.
Although Matt Painter versus Mike Woodson doesn’t come close to matching Keady-Knight, Purdue and IU faithful have made sure the heated rivalry hasn’t lost much of its punch.
The all-time series between the two schools is led by Purdue by 35 games, 125-90, with the Boilermakers dominating recently having won 10 of the last 11 and 15 of the last 17 dating to 2014,.
Tomorrow’s game will mark the first time Purdue has been ranked No. 1 against IU and this will be the first meeting between the two since 2016 that both were nationally ranked.
Some of (not all) my most memorable trips to Assembly Hall included the following games…
In 1994, IU nipped Purdue by two points despite Glenn Robinson’s 39-point performance. I remember hearing the jam-packed Assembly Hall crowd’s uneasy groans and moans every time the Big Dog shot the ball.
Robinson was so unstoppable in the first half that Knight went to a matchup zone in the second stanza. Knight’s team playing a zone? Yes, it happened. When Robinson was called for traveling with four minutes to play, Knight clapped his hands over his head and urged the raucous crowd to do the same. IU won that game by two.
A couple years prior Robinson, a Proposition 48 casualty who had to sit out his freshman season in West Lafayette, watched behind Purdue’s bench as the Hoosiers destroyed the Boilermakers by 41 points. Two months later Purdue avenged that blowout loss, stunning IU in Mackey.
Assembly Hall’s press row used to be along the sideline that faced the team benches so I was on the floor to watch Purdue’s Chad Austin drain a couple of game-winning buzzer beaters right in front of me. Austin’s incredible shots came in 1996 and 1997.
I was there, too, for redshirt freshman forward Brian Cardinal’s career-high 25-point performance in an overtime Purdue win in 1997. In the postgame press conference, I even had an exchange with Knight that’s detailed in a book I helped author called Tales From Boilermaker County.
I asked Knight to comment on Cardinal’s play.
He said, “Cardinal played very good. He’s a very good player. Are you not capable of writing about it yourself?”
“Very capable,” I replied.
Knight concluded, “Well then, write it.”
I said, “I will.”
Three years later Knight was fired.
Keady stepped down from the Purdue job in 2005 and turned his Boilermaker program over to Matt Painter, who has taken Purdue to heights never before attained, at least in the regular season.
This season Purdue is off to its best start in school history. The No. 1-ranked Boilermakers will sport a sparkling 22-1 overall record (11-1 in the Big Ten) when they hit the Assembly Hall hardwood tomorrow afternoon.
Prior to last season, Purdue had never been ranked No. 1 in the nation. Now, however, the Boilermakers have attained the top ranking in back-to-back seasons.
Interestingly enough, IU was expected to have the type of success Purdue is enjoying, at least that’s what the pundits believed.
The Hoosiers, however, have endured some key injuries to players like Xavier Johnson (foot), Race Thompson (knee) and Trayce Jackson-Davis (back).
Thompson and TJD will start against Purdue, but Johnson is out indefinitely.
As of late, IU has been playing winning basketball. The Hoosiers had won five games in a row before Tuesday’s night 11-point loss at a surging Maryland team.
Former IU All-American Mike Woodson is in his second season guiding the Hoosier program. He is the sixth IU coach since 2000.
Last season Woodson led the Hoosiers to their first win over Purdue since 2016. That three-point victory helped earn IU a berth in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years.
As for tomorrow’s clash between the top-ranked Boilermakers and 21st-rated Hoosiers, the game will feature two of the best post players in America in Purdue’s 7-foot-4 monster Zach Edey and Jackson-Davis.
The atmosphere will be off the charts. The noise level deafening.
This season Purdue has won at daunting road environments like Michigan State and The Palestra in Philadelphia when it faced Penn State.
This though will be different, very different.
The hatred level for Purdue, especially since it is No. 1 and been the dominate program in the state now for a while, will be sky high, and the 17,000-plus in Assembly Hall will let the Old Gold and Black know just how they feel about the visitors early and often.
No doubt this game is important to both teams, but maybe more so for IU.
Lets be real, the season hasn’t gone as expected for the Hoosiers. This was supposed to be a top-10 IU team that was the favorite to win the Big Ten championship and make a run at the Final Four.
The Hoosiers are tough to beat at home, but not so much on the road.
A loss tomorrow would drop IU to .500 in the Big Ten (6-6) and drop Jackson-Davis’ four-year record against Purdue to 1-6 with just one more crack (at least in the regular season) at the Boilermakers remaining and that’s Feb. 25 in Mackey, a place the Hoosiers haven’t won in a decade.
Purdue is in the driver’s seat to win its league-leading 25th Big Ten championship. It holds a three-game lead in the loss column over both Illinois and Rutgers in the Big Ten with IU being four games back.
Big Ten titles aside, Purdue has its sights on making the Final Four for the first time since 1980 and winning its first-ever NCAA championship.
Beating IU would run the Boilermakers’ Big Ten road record to an unthinkable 7-0 and continue to solidify them as the top No. 1 seed come NCAA Tournament Selection Sunday, which would mean their road to Houston, the site of the Final Four, would start in Columbus, Ohio, and continue in Louisville.
As for the Hoosiers, they would like nothing better to knock off No. 1 Purdue and have a court storming party that would rival the one we saw in 2011 when Christian Watford hit that infamous buzzer beater. Plus, they want to bolster their NCAA Tournament resume because they don’t want to be a No. 8 or 9 seed, which would mean facing a No. 1 second in the first weekend if they win their opening game.
Tomorrow’s Purdue-IU showdown has all the makings of a great one, but what else is new? So sit back and enjoy, THE BEST college basketball rivalry, period!
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