Kenny Thompson

Time will tell where the 2023 Big Ten champion Purdue men’s basketball team ranks among the school’s 24 other title squads. Purdue’s 25 championships are the most in conference history, three more than Indiana and five better than Wisconsin and Ohio State. Here’s one man’s rankings of the previous 24 Boilermaker Big Ten championship teams.…

During the early days of college football, most coaches had other occupations. No, nothing like those cheesy insurance commercials that fatten the bank accounts of Alabama’s Nick Saban and new Colorado coach Deion Sanders. Take Purdue’s first coach in 1887. For the princely sum of “$1 per lesson,” 23-year-old Albert Berg was charged with preparing…

Media reports indicate the Big Ten Conference’s top officials will meet sometime this month to work out plans for football schedules in 2024 and beyond. It’s not going to be as simple as plugging in new members USC and UCLA alongside Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern and Wisconsin in the West while shifting Purdue to…

Two former Purdue standouts who skipped the Citrus Bowl game ostensibly to avoid injury and improve their NFL prospects succeeded on the first goal but their professional outlook doesn’t seem to have changed significantly. Quarterback Aidan O’Connell is projected to be a mid-to-late Day 3 pick, which ranges from the fourth through seventh rounds, by…

It’s time to issue mid-term grades for Big Ten Conference basketball. Entering the season, Indiana and Illinois were supposed to be teacher’s pets. The Hoosiers’ Trayce Jackson-Davis was the odds-on favorite for Big Ten Player of the Year honors. A funny thing, though, happened on the way to the awards ceremony. The team generally picked…

It’s such an oft-used phrase, “defense wins championships,” that it’s almost become a sports cliché. But part of Purdue’s downfall in the NCAA basketball tournament a year ago was having a variety of offensive weapons who didn’t always want to guard their man. That is not the problem so far this season for the Boilermakers,…

My old colleague at the Lafayette Journal and Courier, Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame sportswriter Jeff Washburn, liked to say winning in college football and basketball is all about the “Jimmys and Joes, not the Xs and Os.” It’s difficult to argue that premise. Just look at the familiar names that seem to make the…

Baseball legend Yogi Berra may or may not have once said, “it’s déjà vu all over again.” The Ohio State basketball program had that feeling Jan. 5 after losing to Purdue on a last-second shot for the third season in a row. Jaden Ivey did it twice before hitting millions in the NBA Draft lottery…

Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach whose name is on the trophy that goes to the Super Bowl championship team, once said that success comes before work only in the dictionary. Larry Bird did not become a legend at Indiana State and for the Boston Celtics on just talent alone. “I don’t know…