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: 57,310 as of Fall 2025, with 43,067 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. There is no truth to the rumor that Purdue Pete is a spectral horror doomed to haunt the planet with his stare.
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; pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, known for successfully ditching a plane 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; 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; 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: 24-12, with a 13-7 record in the Big Ten. That earned them a #4 seed in the NCAA tournament, and they reached the Sweet 16 thanks to wins over High Point and McNeese before bowing out to Houston.
Final 2024-25 KenPom.com Ranking: #15 out of 364 teams
Final 2024-25 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #15 out of 364 teams
Preseason Poll: The Big Ten doesn’t do a team poll. However, the Columbus Dispatch and Indianapolis Star think that’s trash, so they put together a media poll. Purdue was picked to win the Big Ten, earning 25 of the 28 first place votes and landing 29 points in front of Michigan.
This Season: 9-1 and 2-0 in the Big Ten already.
Current KenPom.com Ranking: #5, down from their preseason rank of #3.
Current BartTorvik.com Ranking: #10, down from their preseason rank of #5.
Returning Stat Leaders
Points: Trey Kaufman-Renn, 20.1 ppg
Rebounds: Trey Kaufman-Renn, 6.5 rpg
Assists: Braden Smith, 8.7 apg
Current Stat Leaders
Points: Fletcher Loyer, 14.4 ppg
Rebounds: Trey Kaufman-Renn, 10.7 rpg
Assists: Braden Smith, 8.8 apg
Bigs? Oscar Cluff starts and plays 23 minutes per game. The 6’11”, 255 pound Australian averaged a double-double in nearly 28 minutes a game last season for South Dakota State, but he’s settling for 11.4 points and 9.1 rebounds for the Boilermakers right now. 7’4” Chicagoan Daniel Jacobsen comes off the bench for 15 minutes a night, and he’s pretty active out there. He’s averaging 9.6 points and 4.7 rebounds, and he’s the shot blocking threat between the two big men. Even in just so few minutes, Jacobsen is averaging 2.4 blocks per game, and if he had the minutes to qualify, he’d have the best shot blocking rate in the entire country according to KenPom.com.
Do you want to count Trey Kaufman-Renn as a big? He’s 6’9”, so notably smaller than Jacobsen, but when you’re 1) 240 pounds, and 2) the team’s leading rebounder and 3) averaging a double-double without really attempting threes at all, that probably means you’re doing a lot of work on the inside one way or another. Kaufman-Renn missed the first two games of the season for Purdue, but he’s been averaging 26 minutes a night since then
Shooters? Purdue is the 11th most accurate three-point shooting team in the country. They hit over 40% of their long range attempts, and that assault is led by Fletcher Loyer’s team high 61 attempts. The 6’5” Indianan is a career 40% three-point shooter for the Boilermakers and he’s ratcheted that up to just short of 46% so far this year. He’s just 2-for-8 in Purdue’s last two games, though.
If Loyer’s not hitting, Purdue has options. Braden Smith is splashing threes at a 44% clip this season, and CJ Cox is no slouch at 41%. There are a couple of bench options who are succeeding in limited roles to this point of the year as well, so it’s probably just best to defend everyone on the arc, even Omer Mayer. The 6’4” freshman is at just 27% on the year but he is at 3.7 attempts per game so it’s not like the Purdue coaching staff is slowing him down all that much.
The catch for Purdue? They don’t shoot a lot of threes. KenPom.com has them at just #210 in the country in attempt ratio with about 38% of their shots coming from behind the arc. Getting Braden Smith to settle for twos — he shoots more of those than threes — is a big deal because the 6-foot guard is connecting at just 39% inside the arc. My memory of his shot selection on two-pointers at Fiserv Forum last year matches his stats: 1-for-5.
Head Coach: Matt Painter, in his 21st season as Purdue head coach and 22nd as a Division 1 head coach thanks to one year at Southern Illinois. He has a record of 480-216 with Purdue and 505-221 overall.
What To Watch For: Beating Purdue is easy.
All you have to do is hold them to 46% shooting from the field and 25% from behind the three-point line and 33% from the free throw line. Okay, that’s not all you have to do. You also need to shoot 58% from behind the three-point line yourself. Do that, and you should be able to beat Purdue by 19 points.
[checks notes]
Okay, I’m sorry, that’s apparently NOT easy to do. That is only what then-#10 and now-#4 Iowa State did to the Boilermakers last Saturday in Mackey Arena, and that’s Purdue’s only loss of the season so far.
[shuffles papers]
Wait, no, sorry, another correction. That is what the Cyclones did IN THE SECOND HALF ALONE. Sweet Christmas.
Last year in Milwaukee, Marquette held Purdue to 0.85 points per possession and scored 1.12 on their own end, no doubt in part because Kam Jones had a triple-double. So far this season, Purdue has been held under 1.18 points per possession on offense just one time, and that’s the Iowa State game. On the other end, Purdue has allowed less than a point per possession four times and held all but one team to 1.16 points per possession or fewer. The lone exception is, of course, Iowa State.
Purdue has racked up four top 70 KenPom.com wins this season by putting up the numbers that I just laid out. #93 Marquette is going to have to do things to the Boilermakers that four other teams that are better than the Golden Eagles could not do if they want to win.
No, I’m not holding my breath.
All Time Series: NOT GREAT. Marquette is 2-11 against Purdue all-time after getting a win at Fiserv Forum powered by a Kam Jones triple-double last season. 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.
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