Purdue Will Crush Indiana In Second Matchup This Season

Indiana vs. Purdue, 8:00 ET

As far as conferences go, I'm interested to see who will have the most teams in the NCAA tournament. The Big 10 should have a decent number, but the ACC and maybe Big 12 will have a good number as well. We know that one of the teams in this game will be in the big dance, and probably a #1 seed, but the other could just be a bubble team. Today we have Indiana taking on Purdue for the second time this season. I was wrong about this game the first time, but I think I'll be correct this time. 

Indiana came into the new year with a record of 10-3 and they had won their first two games in the conference play. At that point their only losses were to UConn, one of the best teams in the country, Kansas, also one of the best teams in the country, and Auburn, a team that should make the NCAA tournament. Since the start of 2024, they have dropped six of the past ten games. Their wins in that stretch have come against Iowa, Minnesota, and Ohio State twice. Their only road win was in the game Tuesday against Ohio State. Their losses have been against Nebraska, also probably on the bubble, Rutgers, probably not a team that will make the tournament, at Wisconsin, at Illinois, and against Penn State. The other loss in that span was against Purdue and they lost that game by 21 points. Now they have to travel to Purdue to play this one. Did they learn anything from that first game? They probably learned that they can't stop Zach Edey. They also learned that the outside shooting defense needs to be substantially better. In that first game, the Hoosiers offense was able to take more shots than the Boilermakers, but the issue was that they had 18 fewer free throw attempts than Purdue, and they had eight fewer rebounds. Outside of that, the turnover rate was about the same, the three-point shooting was similar, and so was the overall field goal percentage. 

Purdue continues to dominate the game right now and is doing it on the back of Edey. Not really a surprise in this bettor's opinion. Edey has been one of the best players in college basketball for quite some time. Their two losses this season have come at the hands of the Big 10 opponents. Both games were on the road, one against Northwestern and one against Nebraska. It was a bit surprising that they dropped the game against Nebraska, but I suppose I understand the Northwestern one. Since that loss to Nebraska, they have won seven straight games. Against Indiana in the first game, Edey was the dominant force as he scored 33 points and 14 rebounds. The 33 points was half of the Hoosier total points in the game. His 14 rebounds were about half of the total that Indiana was able to grab. I have to imagine that Indiana will look to make the rest of the Purdue team beat them. The thing is… the rest of the Purdue team can beat them. They have three guards that shoot over 35% from three and they have a total of seven guys on the roster that shoot over 35% and six of them over 40%. The entire team shoots at 40% collectively. This should be something you can rely on with Purdue at home. 

I think that Purdue will coast in this game. The number is pretty high, but I think that is fine. As far as the total, I'd be more comfortable with Purdue going over their team total than I would the game going over the total because I'm not sure that Indiana will be efficient or effective in their offense this game. If they create enough turnovers they can potentially keep it close, but Purdue is just better than Indiana. Let's take Purdue to cover this one.