No. 15 Gonzaga begins its Pac12 era against the Purdue Boilermakers at T-Mobile Arena in the TNT Sports Hall of Fame Series. Tip is at 4:30 p.m. PT (7:30 ET), with Brian Anderson and Grant Hill calling it on TNT, truTV and HBO Max. If you’re up for a doubleheader, No. 22 UCLA and No. 5 Arizona play the nightcap at 7 PT.
Purdue opens the season just outside the AP Top 25 for the first time in 80 weeks. The coaches poss still has them No. 24, and Matt Painter just signed an extension through 2030-31,
so nobody in West Lafayette is panicking. But this is a very different Purdue team than Gonzaga has faced in the past.
Purdue is 5-0 all-time against Gonzaga. Two of those wins ended Gonzaga seasons in the Sweet 16, and three came in a 17-month stretch from November 2022 to March 2024. Most of that damage came from Zach Edey, now a center for the Memphis Grizzlies, and point guard Braden Smith, now a rookie on a two-way deal with the Indiana Pacers.
In addition to the loss of Braden Smith, the Boilermakers will be without Fletcher Loyer (graduated), Trey Kaufman-Renn (transfer to Kansas), and Oscar Cluff (graduated) who each left this spring after taking Purdue to the Elite Eight. Those four were the Boilermakers’ top four scorers last season and accounted for 65% of their points.
Purdue has not looked like a finished product yet, but neither has Gonzaga. And Monday is the first time either team has a chance to put a high quality win on their resume.
Purdue’s Preseason
The Boilermakers beat Ball State 87-55 in their exhibition opener and hit 17-of-40 from three, a program exhibition record. Gicarri Harris had 16 points and five assists, C.J. Cox scored 15 on 5-of-6 shooting from deep, and Daniel Jacobsen blocked five shots. Four days later, Purdue beat Purdue Fort Wayne 92-62
Then they went to Hartford and ran into No. 4 UConn.
The Huskies won 76-53, not quite a bloodbath, but a shocking blowout for two top-30 teams. Purdue missed its first 11 threes and finished 2-of-25, shooting 32.8% from the field. Cox was the lone bright spot for Purdue with 18 points and seven rebounds while Jacobsen blocked four shots in 22 minutes. He scored just seven, however while redshirt freshman Antoine West Jr. went 1-of-8 before fouling out.
Painter didn’t sugarcoat it in his postgame presser: “Now you see our real problems, because that’s a real team,” he said afterward. “We have some guys that have a false sense of what it’s like to play high-level basketball together.”
Series History
Gonzaga has lost all five of its contests against Purdue by at least nine points.
In the first meetings, Purdue beat Dan Monson’s Zags 83-68 in the second round of the 1998 Preseason NIT. Sixteen months later, Gene Keady’s sixth-seeded Boilermakers ended Mark Few’s first season as head coach with a 75-66 win in the Sweet 16 in Albuquerque.
In November 2022, No. 24 Purdue beat No. 6 Gonzaga 84-66 in the Phil Knight Legacy semifinals in Portland. Edey scored 15 of his 23 points in the last 15 minutes, and Drew Timme’s 22 points and nine rebounds weren’t nearly enough. Few said afterward that his team got “torched on defense in the second half.”
A year later, at a Maui Invitational relocated to Honolulu, Gonzaga led No. 2 Purdue 35-30 at halftime and then went 0-for-13 from three after the break, going on to lose 73-63. Purdue won the paint 44-30, and Edey finished with 25 points and 14 rebounds.
The most recent loss came in the 2024 Sweet 16 in Detroit. Gonzaga threw every big body it had at Edey, and he drew nine fouls on his way to 27 points and 14 rebounds. Braden Smith added 14 points, 15 assists and eight rebounds. Graham Ike had 18 and 10 before fouling out with 5:07 left, Purdue won the paint 42-26, and the top-seeded Boilermakers won 80-68.
Meet the Boilermakers
This is Matt Painter’s least experienced roster in years. Purdue returns 34.6% of its scoring and 41 career starts, tied for the fewest of his tenure. Nearly all of those starts belong to C.J. Cox.
Cox started all 39 games last season (8.5 points, 37.3% from three) next to Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer. Now he’s Purdue’s best bet for a go-to scorer. He averaged 15.5 points on 58.1% shooting in three exhibitions and was the only Boilermaker who showed up to compete at UConn.
Omer Mayer takes over in the backcourt after spending last season as Smith’s backup, when he averaged 5.5 points in 14 minutes. Replacing the NCAA’s all-time assists leader is a tall order for anyone, let alone a redshirt sophomore who spent most of last season let alone a redshirt sophomore who spent most of last season averaging 1.2 assists a game behind him.
7’4” center Daniel Jacobsen played 12.9 minutes a game behind Oscar Cluff last year. He’s the starter now, and he blocked an astonishing 10 shots in 54 exhibition minutes so far. His offense is a different story, though (can you even imagine having a great rim protecting center who just cannot seem to play competent offense? That would be a nightmare). He scored seven points at UConn, and Painter’s postgame note was short: “He needs to get the ball more.”
Next to him is Caden Pierce, the 2024 Ivy League Player of the Year at Princeton (and former teammate of Gonzaga point guard Xaivian Lee), who visited Gonzaga before picking Purdue. He’s a 6-7 forward with a high motor who rebounds well above his size (9.2 per game in his Ivy POY season), but he’s a 31.6% career three-point shooter, and the Zags will likely give him space on the perimeter and let its bigs clean up the mess on the glass.
Painter says he has nine guys who deserve to start, but it’s been rocky so far, and he’s clearly still looking for the right five.
Keys to the game
Let Izan Almansa Cook
In the past, Purdue beat Gonzaga by winning the battle in the paint. This year, the interior is Purdue’s biggest question mark. Purdue has rebounded by committee since the departure of Cluff and TKR, and the committee had a rough night in Hartford. Caden Pierce, brought in largely to fix that problem, had five rebounds total in the two home exhibitions.
That’s a big opening for Almansa. He’s 10-of-14 from the field through two exhibition matchups, keeps finding the ball on the glass, and on a team that’s been troublingly foul prone in their first outings, Almansa has somehow managed to stay clean. Pair him with Braden Huff, who pulled down 11 rebounds in Fayetteville, and Gonzaga has a frontcourt that should be able to push Purdue around.
After Arkansas, I said the Huff-Almansa pairing would be Gonzaga’s frontcourt by December. Monday would be a good time to speed that up.
Lock Down the Perimeter
UConn forced 13 turnovers in Hartford and turned them into 17 fast-break points. Gonzaga has exactly the kind of backcourt that can do the same thing. Isiah Harwell was Gonzaga’s best defender against Arkansas, and he showed his ability repeatedly to get out in transition quickly and effectively off turnovers. Xaivian Lee started all 35 games for Florida’s SEC title team last season and racked up 41 steals along the way, mostly in his on-ball defense.
Together, they give Gonzaga length, ball pressure and a two-guard tandem who can turn a steal into a layup before Purdue’s defense gets back. Against Lewis-Clark State, the Zags forced 14 turnovers and scored 24 points off them. That was an NAIA team, sure, but Omer Mayer and Antione West Jr. already found out what pressure looks like in Hartford. Harwell and Lee should make sure they find out again.
Get Jacobsen to the Bench
If the Zags aren’t able to push Jacobson off the low block the next best option is getting him off the floor. Last season, he committed 5.8 fouls per 40 minutes, the highest rate on the team, and his minutes shrank down the stretch.
That’s where Huff and Almansa come in. Every time either one catches the ball in the low post, Jacobsen has two choices: give up a basket or risk a foul. Ball screens do the same thing from the other direction. They pull him away from the rim and make him defend in space, which is not where any 7-4 center wants to be.
If Jacobsen picks up two fouls early, Purdue’s options get thin. Expect the Zags to pound it inside early and challenge Jacobson to defend cleanly.
The Zags need to get the Boilermakers into their small-ball lineups and capitalize on the size disparity inside and out.
Stop Fouling
Gonzaga committed 23 fouls at Arkansas, 13 of them in the second half. That sent the Razorbacks to the line 21 times after halftime and left Lee, Harwell, De Sousa and Diop sitting on four fouls apiece.
The Zags cleaned it up against Lewis-Clark State, with 14 fouls and only 10 free throw attempts for the Warriors. But an NAIA team doesn’t test your discipline the way Purdue will, and Purdue’s guards make you pay at the line. C.J. Cox shot 84.2% from the stripe last season, and Gicarri Harris shot 86.1%. If Painter really is playing faster and spreading the floor with four guards, there will be plenty of drives and closeouts where a lazy reach-in turns into two free throws.
The first three keys depend on this one. Harwell and Lee can’t pressure the ball from the bench, and it doesn’t help to get Jacobsen in foul trouble if Gonzaga hands Purdue the same advantage.
Space the Floor, With the Right Guys
Through two exhibitions, Gonzaga is 15-of-55 (27.3%) from three. That number is a little misleading, though.
The problem isn’t that Gonzaga can’t shoot, it’s that so far the wrong guys are doing most of it. Harwell, Lee, Huff and Almansa are a combined 10-of-18 (55.6%) from three this preseason, while the rest of the roster is 5-of-37 (13.5%). Gonzaga’s four best shooters have taken about a third of its threes, and everyone else has taken the rest and made five.
Nathan De Sousa is 1-of-10 from deep, and Luca Foster is 0-of-7. Javon Bennett went 3-of-7 against Lewis-Clark State, but that was against NAIA size, after an 0-for-4 night at Arkansas, bringing his preseason total to 3-of-11.
Purdue will likely load up on Huff the same way Arkansas did, and the kick-outs should go to Lee, Fogle, or Harwell (or to Almansa, who has made three of his four attempts by reading the floor and daring opposing bigs to come out and pick him up). If Chauncey Wiggins is cleared, Gonzaga adds a 6-10 forward who shot 39% from three at Florida State.
Until the rotation settles, the green light from outside belongs to those guys and those guys only. Everyone else should be moving the ball and attacking the glass.
Final Thoughts
If there’s one thing to remember about Purdue’s loss in Hartford, it’s that Purdue does this every year. The UConn game was the Boilermakers’ fourth straight road exhibition loss to a top-15 team, after Arkansas in 2023, Creighton in 2024 and Kentucky in 2025. Those Purdue teams went on to play for a national title, reach the Sweet 16 and reach the Elite Eight, respectively. Painter uses October to find out what’s broken, and he usually has it fixed by March. Monday comes a lot sooner than March, though, and Gonzaga gets this Purdue team before Painter has finished fixing it.
As for the Zags, John Calipari reportedly said after the Arkansas exhibition that Gonzaga would have won by 20 with Davis Fogle on the floor. That’s a nice thing for a coach to say after a win, but it doesn’t prove anything. Fogle is back now, and Gonzaga gets its first real look at what this roster can do against a team that will punish its mistakes. Monday is the first chance to find out whether Calipari was just being generous.
