While it is no longer a rivalry that inspires curiosity around the country, IU-Purdue will always be one of the most important games on the calendar for Hoosier and Boilermaker fans.
This evening the two schools face eachother for the first time this season. Matt Painter brings his 8th-ranked Boilermakers down to Bloomington for a 6:00 CT meeting with Tom Crean and Indiana. (The game will be televised nationally on ESPN.)
We can safely assume that Crean’s young Hoosier squad will go a second straight season with no dancing in March. Painter and the Boilers, on the other hand, are actually inspiring something rarely heard around West Lafayette: legitimate Final Four talk.
If Painter wants some advice on how to reach a Final Four, he’s come to the right place.
Indiana’s multitude of banners will be a nice reminder of what Purdue simply wants to do once; and, despite Painter’s current advantage over Crean, only one of the two coaches has Final Four experience.
So hopefully Painter and the Boilers are wise enough to take advantage of the winning tradition they will be immersed in tonight. If they’re smart, they’ll get themselves a few complimentary Dance lessons from a school that actually knows what it is doing in that regard.
I wonder what such a dance lesson would look like…
(Kudos to the fine folks at JibJab for making the above video so easy to create. And yes, I realize that’s two JibJabs in two days; no, I cannot promise that this one will be the last. They’re too much fun.)
You know, it really was nice of Matt Painter to don a red dress and show his respect for the superior school and basketball program. Even he, apparently, is not foolish enough to believe that a two-year blip on Indiana’s radar will be anything more than just that, a two-year blip.
Painter is surely wise enough to remember that Purdue was nearly as awful as IU is now when Painter first took over for Gene Keady. He got things turned around in relatively short oder, as Crean will over the next few years in Bloomington. Then the IU-Purdue rivalry will regain some of its importance.
IU-Purdue was once, not too long ago, an annual matchup of the nation’s elite. Remember the classic battles between Calbert Cheaney’s Hoosiers and Glenn Robinson’s Boilermakers? I certainly do.
And even when one of the two teams was not its usual strong self, the bi-annual matchup drew widespread interest because it usually influenced the Big Ten race and had the added intrigue of the rivalry between Bob Knight and Gene Keady.
Indiana and Purdue will be hard-pressed to recreate the rivalry’s heyday, but certainly things will become more compelling over the next few years than they are currently. I know that I am all set to leave work a little bit early and do nothing but focus on the game this evening, hoping the Hoosiers can pull off the upset at home. But I’m a die-hard; I look forward to the day when this game is once again on the radar screen of all college basketball fans.
As for tonight’s matchup, it’s very important for Purdue (18-3, 6-3)Â if they have hopes of a regular season Big Ten title and a #1 or #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. For Indiana (9-11, 3-5), this game is important because it would be the signature win for the first two years of the Tom Crean era. Certainly it would give frustrated Hoosier players and fans something to feel good about in the midst of another tough rebuilding season.
The inexperienced and inconsistent Hoosiers are going to have a tough time playing well enough over 40 minutes to beat a talented, experienced team like Purdue. But the game is in Bloomington, and you can never count an IU team out when it’s playing in Assembly Hall.
I’m not going to give a prediction because I’m feeling good about IU’s chances and I don’t want to jinx my Hoosiers. But if you’re a casual fan and you want to see one of the best atmospheres in college basketball absolutely rocking and rolling, tune in to ESPN tonight. Assembly Hall will be going crazy, as it always is, when the PUkes are in town.
And if Tom Crean’s boys come ready to play 40 hard-nosed minutes of basketball, you should get to see a pretty damn good game too.
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* – Matt Painter photo credit: AP Photo/Michael Conroy via SlamOnline
About Jerod Morris
