Big Ten Basketball: Week 9 power rankings
Boiler up! Purdue has taken over the top spot in the newest edition of the Big Ten power rankings because of their stellar play of late. The Boilermakers have won 11 straight games, including a win in their game since last week’s power rankings surfaced.
This win came in West Lafayette over a much improved Nebraska Cornhuskers team by a score of 74-62. This was a good win for the Boilermakers, and a lot of positives came out of it as well. They held the Huskers to just 35% shooting in the second half and received 21 points from senior Vince Edwards.
Purdue is another team much like the Spartans that succeeds on both sides of the ball. They are just behind the Spartans in scoring offense at 86.1 points per game (good for 17th in the nation), and yield just 63.3 points per game to opponents, which is fourth in the Big Ten. These are very impressive numbers for the AP No. 5 ranked Boilermakers, who are really starting to look like a well-oiled machine that could make a deep run in March.
Leading this offensive attack is Carsen Edwards (16.8 ppg), who scored just 7 points in the Nebraska win. It was good to see other guys step up while he struggled. Isaac Haas (14.7 ppg, 5.4 rpg), Dakota Mathias (13.3 ppg, 4.6 apg), and Vince Edwards (14.1 ppg, 8.6 rpg) all are main contributors to this stout scoring attack for the Boilermakers. The sky is the limit for this veteran squad.
Schedule for this week:
- Purdue at Michigan (14-3, 3-1) on Jan. 9
- Purdue at Minnesota (13-4, 2-2) on Jan 13