NCAA Basketball: 10 takeaways from Week 3

Purdue will bounce back

The Purdue Boilermakers will likely be unranked in the next poll, but this is still a ranked team that will bounce back.

The loss to Tennessee was not a fluke no matter what people might say. The Vols were voted No. 13 in the SEC because people in the SEC do not pay attention to basketball and because they have no big name players. This team lost one player from a squad that beat Kentucky and played all four Final Four teams close in their first year of a new head coach.

Purdue’s following loss to Western Kentucky was equally as disappointing, but WKU plays tough and gave Villanova all it could handle, as well.

Luckily, the Boilermakers bounced back by dismantling the No. 2 Arizona Wildcats, 89-64 in a win that should both build confidence and look really, really good on their NCAA Tournament resume. The Wildcats might be down now, but they will bounce back too.

The game on Tuesday against the Louisville Cardinals will be a big one for the Boilermakers — one in which I think they win.

However, even if they lose, the Big Ten does not have any elite teams outside of Michigan State, so Purdue will have massive opportunity in conference play to cement themselves as one of the best teams in the country.