A FEW THINGS ABOUT PURDUE

• Purdue is retooling a bit after losing two-time Player-of-the-Year, but has an excellent three-man core to build around in juniors Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn. Smith is the preseason Big Ten Player-of-the-Year.

• The Boilermakers were picked as the preseason favorite to win the newly expanded Big Ten. It would be their third title in as many years.

• Purdue lost a charity exhibition at Creighton and won a preseason game vs. Grand Valley State before this opener.

• Purdue hasn’t lost a November game since 2020 a run of 21 straight wins.

ABOUT THIS GAME

• This game was originally by former Purdue assistant coach Steve Lutz for last season after he left West Lafayette to coach the Islanders, but he left for Western Kentucky after a season and is now at Oklahoma State. It was postponed a year after Corpus Christi’s coaching change. Lutz’s daughter, Caroline, is a student at Purdue, part of the reason he wanted to play the game.

• Corpus Christi won 21 games last season under new coach Jim Shaw, who was previously on Lutz’s staff.

• Forward Owen Dease is an Evansville native who was a grassroots teammate of Purdue’s Fletcher Loyer with the Indy Heat program. Dease, a redshirt junior, averaged seven points last season.

Center Shilo Jackson is an Indianapolis native who attended junior college at Vincennes.

• Forward Garry Clark returns after averaging a team-best 13.2 points and 8.1 rebounds last season

THREE KEYS FOR PURDUE

Purdue has shown it can really score. The question lie in whether it can defend and rebound at the highest level. This isn’t the highest level, so neither concern should be exploitable in Game 1.