Purdue Men’s Basketball Scores Identity Test Win in Knocking Off Alabama

Plus, other contenders have emerged after the first two weeks of the season as Indiana and Illinois make their cases and a host of dark horses lurk.

Purdue Boilermakers guard C.J. Cox reacts after scoring against the Alabama Crimson Tide. / Alex Martin/Journal and Courier / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Big November college basketball games are often best used as measuring sticks, and perhaps no men’s team in the country had more to prove over the weekend than the Purdue Boilermakers. Matt Painter’s club was the preseason favorite in the Big Ten almost by default, but there was plenty of skepticism about the Boilers’ ability to compete for a return trip to the Final Four with Zach Edey no longer wearing gold and black. Early buy game results had done Purdue no favors, struggling to put away the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders and getting bludgeoned in the paint by the Yale Bulldogs were early potential warning signs. Playing the Alabama Crimson Tide, the No. 2 team in the AP poll with over half of its 10-man rotation on the NBA radar in some form, figured to answer the early question of whether Purdue could hang with the top teams in the sport.

And that answer? A resounding yes. 

Purdue’s post-Edey identity is still developing, but Friday’s win over the highly ranked Tide was a huge step. Even without their two-time national player of the year dominating the paint, Purdue put up a hyper-efficient offensive day, dicing up Alabama’s defense to the tune of nearly 1.3 points per possession. The path to victory in high-level games like Friday’s is narrower for the Boilermakers than it was a year ago, but they showed off the formula against the Tide. 

Post Scoring … From a Different Source

Trey Kaufman-Renn has taken the leap Purdue hoped for this offseason, emerging as the frontcourt’s top offensive weapon after sitting in Edey’s shadows the last two seasons. While nowhere near as physically imposing at 6' 9", 230 pounds, Kaufman-Renn’s quickness and mobility creates different problems for opposing defenses, and he’s also a better passer than Edey was on the block. He turned in the finest game of his college career Friday night, going for 26 points, eight rebounds and four assists in the winning effort. Alabama refused to send double teams to the post (something Nate Oats said postgame he should have deployed) and Purdue was happy to feed Kaufman-Renn almost every trip.

Elite Guard Play

There are as many good point guards across college basketball as there have been in a long time, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one better than Braden Smith. Smith outplayed Alabama star Mark Sears on Friday even on a day he didn’t shoot it great, tallying 10 assists to just one turnover and scoring 17 points. Through four games, he’s averaging over 15 points, six rebounds and nine assists per game. And his backcourt running mate Fletcher Loyer delivered in exactly the type of game some had questioned how effective he could be in, pouring in an efficient 17 points despite his athletic deficiencies compared to the Tide’s backcourt. 

But the defining sequence in the game came from freshman guard C.J. Cox, yet another undervalued recruit Painter and his staff brought to West Lafayette. The Boilers beat Princeton for Cox, the No. 271 recruit in his class according to the so-called experts, and in his first big game he made three off-the-dribble threes in less than a minute to swing the game in the second half. The sequence conjured images of Carsen Edwards’s elite shot-making, and Cox provides this group a major scoring lift off the bench. 

Small Ball

Perhaps the biggest development from the Alabama game was Painter’s willingness to slide Kaufman-Renn to the five and surround him with four shooters—namely bigger wings like Camden Heide and Myles Colvin. That look won’t work against everyone and could leave the Boilers exposed on the glass, but it creates more one-on-ones for Kaufman-Renn on the block offensively and more space for Smith to operate in ball screens. With freshman big Daniel Jacobsen out for the season with a fractured tibia, Purdue’s options at center aren’t ideal. The ability to go smaller gives Painter more options and a few extra avenues to get Cox and fellow freshman guard Gicarri Harris on the floor. 

Mackey Arena was animated Friday night, and time will tell if Purdue can replicate this recipe on the road and in March. But Friday’s performance was early validation that the Boilermakers will remain a fixture at the top of what is shaping up to be a wildly entertaining Big Ten race. 

A look at some of the other contenders and how they’ve fared through two weeks: 

Indiana Hoosiers

I stayed in-state following the Friday Alabama-Purdue showdown to get a first look at Indiana in the Hoosiers’ first high-major game of the season against the South Carolina Gamecocks. And while the Hoosiers are not a finished product yet, it’s clear Mike Woodson’s team has made major strides after last season’s debacle. 

Much of the preseason attention went to the addition of Arizona transfer Oumar Ballo at center, but the biggest needle-mover in my eyes has been Washington State transfer point guard Myles Rice. Rice was fantastic Saturday, flashing his elite shot-making prowess off the bounce and looking like the team’s emotional leader, hyping up the crowd after big shots that helped IU take an early lead it never relinquished. Rice plays with outstanding pace and helps keep the Hoosiers from getting bogged down in the half court, something that was a problem far too often a year ago. 

And while it’s still frustrating to see IU give up 13 offensive rebounds while playing two high-level bigs in Ballo and Malik Reneau, it was encouraging to watch the Hoosiers shut down almost everything around the basket for Gamecocks star Collin Murray-Boyles. A potential NBA prospect, Murray-Boyles was frustrated all afternoon, held to just four shot attempts and two points and committed four turnovers before fouling out in 19 minutes.

Indiana’s core four of Rice, Reneau, Ballo and uber-talented wing Mackenzie Mgbako is enough to give this team a chance for a special season. At times you’re still left wanting more from the Hoosiers from a decision-making and effort standpoint, but clearly this group is much-improved and should be in the Big Ten’s upper echelon. 

Illinois Fighting Illini

After watching the Illini practice in October, I felt that Brad Underwood had the most talented team in the Big Ten. Through two weeks, I’ve seen nothing to change my mind on that front. Will Riley, Kasparas Jakucionis and Tomislav Ivisic have lived up to the lofty expectations and more in their three games in an Illini uniform. 

It all starts with Jakucionis, one of the most gifted passers in the sport right now. His skill level in ball screens is elite, and Illinois surrounds him with a ton of shooting to put loads of pressure on opposing defenses. Meanwhile, Riley scored 26 points in the second half of the opener against Eastern Illinois and has proven to be an elite-level shot-maker. Then there’s Ivisic, the 21-year-old big from Croatia classified as a sophomore but in his first year of college basketball. He hasn’t gotten his three-point stroke going just yet, but he’s excellent around the rim and has been a rebounding machine thus far.

Can a team this young show off the consistency necessary to win a Big Ten regular-season title? Perhaps not. But Illinois may well have the highest March ceiling of any Big Ten team. Wednesday’s showdown with Alabama in Birmingham will be a good litmus test. 

Dark Horses Emerging 

Limiting the contenders list to three of the league’s 18 teams would be foolish when, in the preseason, KenPom projected just a two-game difference between finishing second and 16th. So far, there hasn’t been much to separate a lot of these teams. 

The big surprise thus far has been Wisconsin, with the Badgers off to a 5–0 start highlighted by a 15-point win Friday night over Arizona. The Badgers have been buoyed by the play of Missouri transfer John Tonje, who had 41 points in the Arizona win and looks capable of shouldering much of the scoring load AJ Storr took on a year ago. 

Ohio State looked sharp against Texas in the season opener and has gotten big contributions early on from freshman John Mobley Jr. With Mobley, Bruce Thornton and Meechie Johnson Jr., the Buckeyes look to have one of the better backcourts in the league. Getting former five-stars Sean Stewart and Aaron Bradshaw going up front is the next step. 

We’ll learn a lot more about Rutgers next week when they head to Las Vegas for the Players Era Invitational. The Knights were sharp offensively in Ace Bailey’s debut Friday after the five-star wing missed the first two games of the season with a minor hip injury. Bailey and Dylan Harper have looked the part of being two of the best players in the Big Ten early on, but playing against Notre Dame and Alabama is a different beast than Monmouth and Wagner.