Throughout the season I’ve given you, the readers and Purdue fans, a chance to participate in a survey just about every week. With the regular season over, and the Big Ten Tournament complete, I thought it was a good time to take a look back at some of the predictions you all made throughout the year and see how close, if at all, you were to being right.
First, back on the week of October 3rd you predicted how many Big Ten games Purdue would win this season.
Purdue would finish with 13 wins thus just
3% of you got this one right. Tough way to start.
Up next, we asked you which player would have a breakout year for the Boilermakers.
It’s hard to say who was right or wrong on this one but I thought it was interesting how high the expectations for Daniel Jacobsen were.
Then, I wanted to know who would win the Big Ten, if it wasn’t Purdue.
Michigan had 31% of the vote but came in a distant second behind the Michigan State Spartans.
Then, in the first week of January 2026 I wanted to see how many people believed that Purdue star Braden Smith would take down the NCAA record.
At that time, 78% of readers believed that Smith would break the record. However, in the third week of February I asked this question again and things weren’t looking so rosy for the Boilermakers.
The number of respondents who thought Smith would stand atop the record books at the end of the year had fallen to just 30%.
Next, in the last week of February, Purdue fans were asked what seed Purdue would receive in March Madness.
75% of you nailed it right on the head. Kudos to all of you!
Now it’s Big Ten Tournament time.
77% of readers believed Michigan would win while 11% thought Purdue would win. So 88% of respondents picked one of the teams that reached the final but just 11% chose the true winner.
