Purdue Basketball Preview: Game 16 — @ Rutgers

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Looking to extend its win streak to four and score another coveted Big Ten road win, 20th-ranked Purdue visits Jersey Mike’s Arena Thursday to meet Rutgers.

DETAILS: Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 | 6 p.m. ET | TV: FS1: (Alex Faust, Bill Raftery) | Radio: Purdue Radio Network
PURDUE (11-4, 3-1 B1G): ROSTER | SCHEDULE | STATS
RUTGERS (8-7, 1-3 B1G): ROSTER | SCHEDULE | STATS

Team	AP	Coaches	NET	KenPom	KenPom Win%
Purdue	20	19	27	18	68%
Rutgers	—	—	90	81	32%

A FEW THINGS ABOUT PURDUE

• After losing four in a row to Rutgers starting in 2020, Purdue has since won four of the last five, including last year’s 68-60 win at Jersey Mike’s, the last facility its then-seniors had yet to win in.

• The Boilermakers are looking to push their winning streak to four games and their Big Ten record to 4-1. It beat Minnesota and Northwestern by 20 and 18 points, respectively.

• Braden Smith is the reigning Big Ten Player of the Week, coming off a 22-seven-and six game at Minnesota and a 20-seven-six vs. Northwestern. He’s averaging 25.3 points and 9.7 assists during the three-game win streak, shooting 44 percent from three.

ABOUT THIS GAME

• Rutgers has two of the top pro prospects in America in freshmen Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, averaging 21.1 and 19.1 points, respectively. Harper — the younger but more highly touted brother of Ron Harper Jr. — leads the Big Ten scoring and Bailey, a 6-foot-10 forward, is fresh off a 39-point game at Indiana. They’re both undoubtedly off to the NBA in two months, projected by some to both be top-five picks.

• Supreme talent has not necessarily translated to winning at a program long defined by having experienced overachievers, older players and a gritty basketball culture. Rutgers is 8-7, 1-3 in the Big Ten, and has lost three of its last four. It lost non-conference games this season to Kennesaw State and Princeton and its last game at Jersey Mike’s Arena resulted in a 75-63 loss to Wisconsin.

• This hasn’t been a typical Rutgers team defensively, as the Scarlet Knights are allowing 75 points per game — they’re used to winning in the 60s, sometimes 50s — and rank 15th among Big Ten team in KenPom defensive efficiency ratings. Their defensive turnover percentage is 180th nationally and their offensive rebounding percentage even worse. Opponents’ effective field goal percentage of 51 percent spits in the eye of everything Pikiell has built that program on.

Alabama scored 95 points against Rutgers. Ohio State scored 80 in Columbus and IU 84 in Bloomington.

THREE KEYS FOR PURDUE

DEFENSIVE DETAIL	PHYSICALITY ON OFFENSE	TURNOVERS
Purdue is playing well defensively and just shut down one of the Big Ten’s best scoring tandems. Now it gets the other. Purdue needs to find ways to exploit Rutgers’ best players’ youth.	Rutgers isn’t great on D and with young teams sometimes you can screen and rebound away their will. It would be great if Trey Kaufman-Renn started getting some foul calls.	As always. Again, this is not a typical Rutgers team but that doesn’t mean Purdue doesn’t have to be hyper-aware of this part of the game. It’s been great lately.

GOLDANDBLACK.COM PREDICTION: PURDUE 73, RUTGERS 66

Jersey Mike’s/The RAC hasn’t been an easy place to play under Steve Pikiell and won’t be Thursday either, but the suffocating defense and rockfight tendencies that have often defined the Knights just haven’t been there this season. When you have elite talent, though, sometimes all it takes is a superhero game, so Purdue has to keep Harper and Bailey from donning any capes. But Purdue seems to have found something more lately and seems up to the job.