New Indiana head coach Darian DeVries will get his first taste of the Indiana-Purdue rivalry this week, as the Hoosiers host the Boilermakers Tuesday night at Assembly Hall.
Purdue enters the game ranked 12th in the latest AP poll, making it the fourth ranked opponent Indiana has seen in the last five games. The Hoosiers are 1-5 in that span, with the only win coming on the road against an unranked Rutgers team.
Advertisement
Looking for the first ranked win of the season, Indiana will have to come up with a win against a Purdue team that is currently favored by four points, according to KenPom, which also gives the Hoosiers just a 37% winning margin. As last week showed, this is a beatable Purdue team, with weaknesses that DeVries should be able to exploit.
Here are 3 things to know about the match:
Two-game losing streak
Purdue comes to Assembly Hall in the middle of a two-game losing streak after being upset on the road by UCLA before suffering a close loss at home to an Illinois team that is now in the top ten nationally. This will be a Boilermakers team even more desperate than usual to win a rivalry.
Advertisement
Over the past five seasons, Matt Painter has only lost two games in a row five times. In 2023-24, Purdue has never lost twice in a row. Only once has he lost a third straight game, last year, when his team lost a third straight game on the road to then No. 14 Michigan State.
They followed that up with a fourth straight loss in Bloomington to an Indiana team that was also struggling. So there is precedent for this type of victory within the rivalry. That said, Matt Painter has been exceptionally good at getting his team to bounce back from back-to-back losses over the last five years.
3-point defense
The main reason for Purdue’s current losing streak is its 3-point defense. Both UCLA and Illinois shot above 45% from deep, an encouraging sign since both teams have season 3-point averages that are roughly equal to Indiana’s.
Advertisement
UCLA isn’t much of a 3-point shooting team, so it’s likely the Boilermakers were sleepwalking defensively. Illinois, on the other hand, is like Indiana in its reliance on the three ball, so their ability to find and make those shots against a Purdue defense that was expecting it is another good sign for Indiana fans.
Indiana’s tendency to chase threes won’t catch Painter’s group off guard, but if the Hoosiers make their shots, they can take advantage of what has been a major weakness for Purdue this season. It’s the first time since 2021-22 — when Purdue lost to St. Peter’s in the NCAA tournament — that the Boilermakers have had a defense outside the top 100 in opponent 3-point percentage allowed.
Brad Smith
For the second straight season, Braden Smith emerges as one of the best college basketball players in the country. He’s averaging 15.2 points per game, plus 9.3 assists, as the guy who makes everything happen for Matt Painter and company.
Advertisement
The surrounding cast is quite similar to last season, with Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn being the next top scorers. Another year of experience with these two allowed Smith to increase his assist average even higher than last season, bringing him to nearly a double-double per game.
With Tayton Conerway’s status for the game questionable, much of the responsibility for containing Smith will fall on Conor Enright. Even if Enright is at his best, limiting Purdue’s offense will be a team effort, one that Indiana will have to undertake without the interior presence it has had to protect the rim from in seasons past.
