NCAA Basketball: Baylor rises, Kentucky falls in latest 2023-24 WTE power rankings

3. Purdue

Purdue was great last season but they weren’t good enough. The Boilermakers’ season ended much earlier than anyone expected, dropping a shocking first-round Tourney game to 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson. Five years ago, Virginia fell to UMBC before cutting down the nets twelve months later; can Purdue pull off this same feat?

First and foremost, reigning National Player of the Year Zach Edey decided to return to Purdue for his senior season and that alone is clearly a major boost for this roster. The Boilermakers will also get guards Fletcher Loyer and Braden Smith back for their sophomore seasons after they really broke out as freshmen. Important pieces like Ethan Morton, Mason Gillis, and Caleb Furst are all back as well, while they landed a very solid piece in Lance Jones, a guard from Southern Illinois.

How motivated will these Boilermakers be by what happened to them last season? Any time a team returns all five starters it’s fair to expect great things from the program. With revenge on their minds, this Purdue team could be even more deadly than last year’s outfit, at least before they ran across Fairleigh Dickinson. Purdue should be a highly-ranked team this upcoming season and certainly look like the favorites in the Big Ten this time around after entering last season as a relative unknown.