Purdue Basketball Preview: High Point at the NCAA Tournament
PROVIDENCE — It’s do-or-die season now for Purdue, as the reigning NCAA runners-up begin NCAA Tournament play Thursday, meeting High Point at Amica Mutual Pavilion in Downtown Providence.
DETAILS: Thursday, March 20, 2025 | 12:40 p.m. ET | TV: TruTV (Andrew Catalon, Steve Lappas, Evan Washburn) | Radio: Purdue Radio Network
4 seed PURDUE (21-11): ROSTER | SCHEDULE | STATS
13 seed HIGH POINT (29-5): ROSTER | SCHEDULE | STATS
A FEW THINGS ABOUT PURDUE
• Purdue enters NCAA Tournament play having lost six of its past nine game.
• Braden Smith is now a consensus All-American after earning first-team plaudits from Sporting News, the Associated Press, USBWA and NABC. Purdue’s all-time assists leader and this season’s Big Ten Player-of-the-Year averages 16.1 points, 8.7 assists, 4.6 rebounds and 2.5 steals.
• After hurting his elbow at the Big Ten Tourname, Fletcher Loyer is OK. He will play vs. High Point in a protective sleeve.
• Trey Kaufman-Renn is the third-leading scorer in this NCAA Tournament, averaging 20.2 points. Only Memphis’ PJ Haggerty and New Mexico’s Donovan Dent average more among those who’ll participate in March Madness. The first-team All-Big Ten pick shoots 60 percent from the floor.
• The Boilermakers are one of the least effective two-point defenses in college basketball, as opponents shoot better than 56 percent inside the arc. Those ugly numbers are tied directly to the fact that Purdue is the worst shot-blocking team in America. It’s not that it’s bad at it as much as it is it has no who can do it.
Kaufman-Renn leads Purdue in blocks this season with … nine. (Daniel Jacobsen blocked three shots in the first game before getting hurt in Game 2. He’ll finish the season top-10 on the roster in the category.)
ABOUT THIS GAME
• High Point is riding a 14-game winning streak into its first meeting of the season with a high-major opponent. The Big South champions are playing in their program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament.
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• The Panthers led the Big South in both offensive and defensive efficiency this season, though the level of competition is different once high-major opponents are confronted.
• High Point has been a dominant offensive rebounding team this season, rebounding 35 percent of its misses.
• High Point shot a league-best 58.8 percent on two-point shots this season and held opponents to a league-low 49.2 percent. Level of competition there is part of it, but only part, because High Point has so much length that it generates a lot of pick-and-roll opportunities at the rim and can be highly disruptive in the same areas on D.
Seven-footer Juslin Bodo Bodo is one of the most daunting shot-blockers Purdue has seen all season. He’s top-80 nationally in block percentage and averages 2.6 per game per 40 minutes.
• Bodo is No. 1 nationally in offensive rebounding percentage.
THREE KEYS FOR PURDUE
| JUST BE BETTER | BRADEN SMITH OFF THE DRIBBLE | BE MORE PHYSICAL |
| Yes, that’s broad, but Purdue has been missing something for a month now and now it can’t afford to mess around. High Point’s strengths all seem to align with areas of vulnerability for the Boilermakers. | His jumpers are always key for Purdue, but if Smith can breach High Point’s defense enough off the bounce to get its bigs moving around and out of rebounding positions, that would be helpful, but watch out for all that length in passing lanes. | Purdue doesn’t have great size, but it probably has better bodies than High Point has seen in its league and more power than some of the Panthers’ narrower forwards are accustomed to. Purdue has to keep them off the offensive and disrupt their rolls and slips out of ball screens. |
GOLDANDBLACK.COM PREDICTION: PURDUE 81, HIGH POINT 72
Seriously, most everything High Point is great at, Purdue hasn’t be very good at lately. That’s concerning if you’re a Purdue stakeholder. Or maybe it’s the best thing that could happen, because if there’s a higher level of focus and energy that can be brought out, maybe the matchup dynamics are a catalyst?
