Did the Big Ten Tournament champion Boilers find their mojo in Chicago?
With Smith approaching the Hurley record, Loyer hitting from distance, TKR balling and Cluff in his bag, Purdue looks like a dangerous NCAA Tournament team again.
In a normal Purdue basketball season, when the Boilers are almost never losing at home and are running away with the Big Ten title, the conference tournament is little more than a minor inconvenience. They would get knocked out early and the sense you got from Matt Painter was, “Yeah, whatever.” It meant extra days to rest and prepare. And, let’s face it, winning the Big Ten Tournament rarely means much of anything in terms of the NCAA seeding, or at least it hasn’t in the recent past.
But this is not a normal Purdue basketball season.
After losing just five home games between 2020 and 2025, the Boilers, the preseason No. 1 team, lost five times at Mackey this season. More unsettling, they came into the conference tournament having slumped to 6-7 and were giving up 91 points per game during a recent stretch. So what we’re saying is, they really needed this title run for their confidence, if nothing else. They needed those three seniors – Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman – to play their best basketball, for Oscar Cluff to continue his dominant work down low, for the Boilers to start playing something resembling defense.
Usually, the Big Ten Tournament is an annoyance for Purdue. This year, it was a high priority.
The Big Ten Tourney championship helped in myriad ways, not the least of which is, they went from a presumptive three seed to a two seed. They will face 15-seed Queens, an Atlantic Sun program based in Charlotte which just made the jump to Division I in 2022. Like a lot of mid-majors, they are largely guard-oriented, play a fast pace and like to shoot three-pointers. Sound familiar?
