Purdue Men’s Basketball Goes From Unranked To No. 1 In AP Poll In Shortest Time

Before this season, most observers predicted the Purdue men’s basketball team would take a step back from last year when the Boilermakers advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16. After all, four of Purdue’s top six scorers had left the program, including NBA lottery pick and All-American guard Jaden Ivey.

Entering this season, the Boilermakers were picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten by the media and were unranked in the Associated Press poll. But on Monday, Purdue (10-0) was ranked first in the AP poll. It is only the second time the Boilermakers have been atop the AP poll, joining last year’s team, which was ranked first for one week in early December.

This is also the earliest time in a season that an unranked men’s team in the preseason has risen to number one since the AP poll began in 1950-51, according to David Worlock, the NCAA’s director of media coordination/statistics.

Eight other teams have gone from unranked to number one in a season. The previous record was the 1963-64 UCLA team, which reached No. 1 on Jan. 6, 1964 and ended up 30-0 and winning its first national title. And the most recent time it occurred was Virginia, which was ranked first on Feb. 12, 2018. The Cavaliers ended that season by losing to University of Maryland-Baltimore County, becoming the first and only No. 1 seed in NCAA tournament men’s basketball history to lose to a No. 16 seed.

It’s unlikely that Purdue will finish undefeated this season as Indiana was the last undefeated national champion in 1976. It’s also unlikely the Boilermakers will lose in the NCAA tournament’s first round as top-three seeds almost always win those opening games.

Still, the NCAA tournament doesn’t begin for another three months, although as of now Purdue is looking like a team that could advance to its first Final Four since 1980. That team was led by senior center Joe Barry Carroll, a consensus first-team All-American who averaged 22.3 points, 9.2 rebounds and 2.8 blocks per game.

This year’s team is also led by a big man in 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey, who is averaging 22 points, 13.7 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game. Edey is first in analyst Ken Pomeroy’s Player of the Year standings and is the early season favorite to win the national player of the year awards. He’s been the best player on the court in all of Purdue’s games, including back-to-back victories over Gonzaga and Duke on Nov. 25 and 27 in the Phil Knight Legacy tournament in Portland, Ore.

Mason Gillis, a 6-foot-6 forward, and Caleb Furst, a 6-foot-10 forward, are the only other Purdue players to have started a game for the Boilermakers before this season. Gillis started the first seven games of this season before sustaining a back injury, forcing him to miss the past three games. Furst has replaced Gillis in the starting lineup since then.

Purdue’s starting guards have all been pleasant surprises, which has been crucial to the team’s success after Ivey left for the NBA and two other guards from last year’s team transferred: Eric Hunter Jr. to Butler and Isaiah Thompson to Florida Gulf Coast.

Freshmen guards Fletcher Loyer and Braden Smith are second and third on the team in scoring, averaging 13.1 points and 9.3 points per game, respectively.

Neither player was considered to be an elite recruit with Loyer ranked 95th and Smith 196th in the 247Sports Composite for the high school class of 2022. But Purdue coach Matt Painter did a nice job evaluating the players, both of whom are Indiana natives: Lowe is from Fort Wayne and Smith is from Westfield.

Junior Ethan Morton, who didn’t start any games during his first two years at Purdue, is the other starting guard. He is averaging 4.8 points and a team-high 3.7 assists per game.

Brandon Newman, a fourth-year player from nearby Valparaiso, Ind., is the top reserve and is averaging 7.7 points and 4.2 rebounds per game. Trey Kaufman-Renn, a redshirt freshman forward from Sellersberg, Ind., is also contributing off the bench with 5.5 points per game.

Other coaches have built top programs through recruiting highly ranked high schoolers and adding players via the transfer portal. But Painter, who is in his 18th season at Purdue, has done neither with this year’s team as he’s primarily relied on in-state players and eschewed transfers.

Six of Purdue’s top eight scorers are from Indiana: Edey, a Toronto native, and Morton, a Pennsylvania native, are the only exceptions. And David Jenkins Jr., who previously played at South Dakota State, UNLV and Utah, is the only transfer that Purdue signed during the offseason. He’s playing 15.3 minutes per game and averaging just 3.7 points, which is ninth on the team.

Purdue has three more nonconference games this month, starting with Saturday’s game in Indianapolis against Davidson, before the Big Ten schedule continues on Jan. 2 against Rutgers. So far, the Boilermakers are 2-0 in the Big Ten, having blown out Minnesota, 89-70, on Dec. 4 and squeaked by Nebraska, 65-62, in overtime on Dec. 10.

As of now, Purdue has emerged as the Big Ten’s top team and seems on track for its eighth consecutive NCAA tournament appearance, but the conference is deep with six teams ranked in the AP top 25 and 11 teams ranked in Pomeroy’s top 45.

The Boilermakers will have plenty of games remaining in the regular season that should prepare them for March, where they will be looking to avenge last year’s surprising Sweet 16 loss to upstart Saint Peter’s and win the first national title in program history.