An upset of the Purdue Boilermakers on Thursday night would go a long way towards salvaging the Rutgers Scarlet Knights season.
Thursday, January 9th, 6:00 pm ET. FS1
Location: Jersey Mike's Arena in Piscataway, NJ
The Purdue Boilermakers make the trip to New Jersey on Thursday night to face a Rutgers Scarlet Knights squad seeing what could've been a magical season slip away.
Steve Pikiell's program entered the year with unbelievable hype. That's what happens when you land not one, but two transformational recruits in Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper.
But the lack of high-level players around the freshmen has led to one of Pikiell's more troubling seasons in a glowing tenure in Piscataway. Rutgers is only one game above .500 and 1-3 to start Big Ten play.
Harper and Bailey are worth the price of admission. Harper is averaging 21.1 points and 4.5 assists per game, while Bailey is averaging 19.1 points and 7.6 rebounds per game. But both have missed some time this season - Harper clearly showing the aftereffects of an illness in Rutgers' most recent game, a loss to Indiana - and nobody has stepped up to carry the load; nobody else is averaging even 8 points per game.
While Rutgers gained a couple of generational stars in the offseason, Purdue lost one in Zach Edey. Yet Matt Painter's Boilermakers have hardly missed a step, still a Top 25 outfit even if they don't appear to have the same Final Four ceiling of a year ago.
The ascendance of Trey Kaufman-Renn has everything to do with Purdue staying towards the top of the Big Ten. The junior has broken out in a big way, leading the team with 17.8 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. He's been efficient, too, shooting nearly 60 percent from the floor.
Guard Braden Smith has been on a heater of his own in the past few games. He's averaged more than 25 points and nearly 10 assists per game in the last three games, all Purdue victories by at least 19 points. Rutgers is struggling, but they're still arguably better than all of three of those opponents and should give Smith more trouble.
Fans of both teams are well aware that weird things can happen when Purdue enters Jersey Mike's Arena. No Rutgers basketball fan will forget the halfcourt buzzer-beater in December 2021 that gave the Scarlet Knights their first victory over a No. 1 team in school history.
The player who hit that shot? One older brother of Dylan Harper: Ron Harper Jr.
If Rutgers is going to recapture any of that magic from three years ago, this would be the time to do it. The Boilermakers are great, but hardly unbeatable. Then again, their worst loss of the year was at Penn State. A loss at Rutgers would be considered worse at this point.
Rutgers hasn't shown much ability to beat a top team this season, losing in all five of their games against Quad 1 opponents. That doesn't bode well for the Scarlet Knights.
Prediction: Purdue 80, Rutgers 70