Nathan Baird, Indianapolis StarTue, December 2, 2025 at 9:47 AM UTC·5 min readPISCATAWAY, N.J. — Most of Purdue men’s basketball’s veteran, tested roster has begun to run out of new experiences to cross off its to-do list.
Win a Big Ten championship? Done that a couple of times. Go deep in the NCAA tournament? You might have heard about that Final Four run two years ago.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhat regular-season experiences remain for these Boilermakers to accomplish for the first time?
How about an emphatic start to the road portion of the Big Ten Conference schedule? The final chance for this group of seniors to launch itself into league play comes Tuesday night at Rutgers.
Of the last six conference road openers, the best showing came at Nebraska in 2022. Purdue blew a 14-point lead with 15 minutes remaining in regulation and were nearly undone by Keisei Tominaga’s 19 points off the bench.
There’s your highlight. The other five games were losses. Last season’s sloppy, jarring beatdown at Penn State actually marked the Boilermakers’ sixth loss in its last seven December road games.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt’s not as if Purdue keeps opening Big Ten play against national championship contenders, either. Other losses came against Nebraska, Iowa, Northwestern and the Scarlet Knights. They upended a Jaden Ivey and Zach Edey fronted team in 2021.
Sometimes those losses are simply a quirk of the schedule. Purdue might have lost the same game in January or February.
Other times, they speak to a vulnerability which must be overcome to remain in the Big Ten championship race.
Last season might be the best example of all. Penn State would go on to finish 16-15 and next-to-last in the Big Ten. On Dec. 5, though, they looked like the team with deep NCAA tournament upside. Purdue turned the ball over 24 times, with leaders such as Trey Kaufman-Renn (seven), Fletcher Loyer (five) and Braden Smith (three) accounting for over half of them.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementPenn State led by 27 with under 10 minutes to play. This wasn’t one that got away.
So taking care of the ball should have been a prime topic of focus heading into this game. The first 11 minutes of Friday’s victory over Eastern Illinois, when the Boilers turned the ball over nine times, provided a much more recent warning.
“You always have to grab at those pockets,” coach Matt Painter said following the win over EIU. “When you play at a really, really high level like we did against Texas Tech, and then you play at a lower level, you have to know the ‘Why.’
“A lot of times it’s the little things. It’s the details. And tonight it was us not taking care of the basketball.”
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Should Purdue still be the Big Ten championship favorite?
Purdue opened the season as the Big Ten favorite in any number of media polls. They were still the nation’s No. 1 team when both major polls came out Monday.
Problem is, another Big Ten team actually has the nation’s best collection of wins. Michigan went to the Player’s Era tournament in Las Vegas last week and whipped San Diego State (No. 48 in KenPom), Auburn (No. 22) and Gonzaga (No. 5) by a combined 110 points — and at least 30 per game.
The major analytical sites are growing near-unanimous in their consensus of which Big Ten team has had the best start to the season, and it’s not the Boilermakers.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementKnow who’s also 7-0? Michigan State, with neutral-court wins over Kentucky and North Carolina. Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska and USC are also undefeated thus far. Don’t forget about Illinois, whose two losses came against Alabama in Chicago and UConn at Madison Square Garden.
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Purdue plays Michigan, Michigan State and Illinois once apiece this season. All three must come to Mackey Arena. From one perspective — the one I used when voting the Boilermakers my preseason No. 1 in the Big Ten — that makes the path to a conference championship a bit easier.
From another perspective, with the chance of a home loss against one or more of those teams, Purdue cannot afford one of these now-customary road stumbles in December.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementRutgers was picked to finish at or near the bottom of the league. On paper, the Scarlet Knights lack the functional height to prevent Kaufman-Renn, Oscar Cluff and Daniel Jacobsen from having a field day. They don’t defend the 3-point shot well or create a lot of turnovers.
Painter has seen enough over the past six years to know that may not matter Tuesday night.
“Any time you go on the road, especially to start a season, you’ve got to expect their best,” Painter said. “That’s what we have to expect — expect their best and be ready to go, because we know it’s going to be a big-time environment.”
Insider: Why Matt Painter doesn’t believe Purdue is a fit for Player’s Era
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe numbers say this should be a 1-0 start in Purdue’s quest to win a third Big Ten championship in four years.
The calendar suggests Rutgers might be as dangerous as any team the Boilers face.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue basketball vs Rutgers preview: Big Ten championship chase begins
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