Kenny Thompson

Unlike several Big Ten schools which recruit new teams each season from the transfer portal, Purdue men’s basketball prospered during the past 10 years mainly with high school recruits. But like he did when recruiting misjudgments sent the Boilermakers spiraling to the bottom of the Big Ten in 2014, Matt Painter has adjusted to the…

November can’t get here soon enough for Purdue men’s basketball fans. Not since the Troy Lewis-Todd Mitchell-Everette Stephens Boilermakers in 1987-88 have expectations been higher in West Lafayette. Now that the Final Four curse has been broken, a national championship does not seem out of the question to a normally pessimistic fan base. Some even…

Thanks to offensive lineman Marcus Mbow, Purdue’s streak of having an NFL Draft pick will extend to 26 of the past 27 years next weekend. Mbow, who gave up his senior season to enter the draft, is projected as the sixth-best guard in the draft and ranked 84th overall by The Athletic’s Dane Brugler. “Mbow…

Today, the Bob Cousy Award. Tomorrow? Maybe the Wooden Award. It’s heady times for former Indiana Mr. Basketball Braden Smith, who took home the award as the nation’s best point guard during Final Four Week in San Antonio. Presuming Smith returns to Purdue for his senior season, some national media members think he could join…

Here are some interesting numbers from Purdue’s NCAA Tournament run. Six – That’s the number of Sweet 16 appearances over the last eight tournaments. Midwest Region top seed Houston, the Boilermakers’ opponent Friday night at Lucas Oil Stadium, also has six. Seven – Numbers of turnovers against High Point, matching a school record for fewest…

Instead of filling out an NCAA tournament bracket this week and losing to someone who picked winners by school mascots, I decided on an eight-team fantasy tournament based on the hometowns of Purdue basketball players. The top seed as voted upon by me is Fort Wayne, which edged Indianapolis for the honor. Both cities have…

Sometimes it feels good to be wrong. When the Purdue men’s basketball team wilted down the stretch, falling from first place to a share of fourth, I figured Big Ten Player of the Year honors would go to someone whose team finished ahead of the Boilermakers and not preseason favorite Braden Smith. Credit the league…

There’s really no such thing as an unbreakable record but some standards are more out of reach than others. In Major League Baseball there’s Cy Young’s 511 victories and Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game hasn’t been approached by another NBA player. No NFL team has come close to the 73 points…

Barring the unexpected, yet another rewrite to the Purdue men’s basketball record book will take place sometime tonight in Mackey Arena. One season after Zach Edey broke the career scoring and rebounding records that stood for 54 and 44 years, respectively, Braden Smith will supplant Bruce Parkinson’s 48-year-old standard as the Boilermakers’ career assists leader…

Remember when Darrell Hazell was a home run hire for the Purdue football program? “Hazell produced one of the more remarkable feats of 2012, leading Kent State to not only its first bowl game in 40 years but also an 11-win season and MAC championship game appearance,” Stuart Mandel, then with SI.com, wrote. “Hazell ……