Final Thoughts: Purdue 2025-26 Men’s Hoops season

After Purdue’s 2025-2026 season met its end in the Bay Area this past weekend, a quick review of some of the major themes …

THE BOTTOM LINE

The season didn’t end up where Purdue wanted it to, but ultimately, when all was said and done, it was a success. Had that determination been made after Senior Day, it would not have been.

But by winning the Big Ten Tournament and getting back to the Elite Eight, Purdue really salvaged something tangible from a season that was otherwise up and down.

Defining success in the preseason is folly. These are long seasons, played by young people, in which any number of things can go wrong. And in the absurdly randomized NCAA Tournament, making predictions is futility defined. Making them six months in advance is even crazier.

Yes, Purdue wanted to get back to the Final Four and win a national title, or at least a Big Ten regular-season championship, and none of those things happened.

But the fact that 30 wins, a Big Ten Tournament title, and an Elite Eight appearance can even be framed as a “disappointment” is the ultimate backhanded compliment to the success Purdue has experienced these last few years with this senior class and coaching staff now. It reflects the reality that the standard at Purdue is sky-high now.

THE BIG TEN WAS A MONSTER

Yes, Purdue was again the preseason favorite and was ranked No. 1 to start the season, but preseason expectations are as empty as they’ve ever been. With constant roster turnover across college basketball, every team enters the year more or less as an unknown.

When all was said and done, the Big Ten produced a half dozen Sweet 16 teams. Purdue did have an enormous advantage by drawing three of those elite teams only once on the schedule, and those games were at home. That’s where the disappointment lies: Purdue could not protect its home floor against the best teams in its conference. But it was a loaded league.

Who expected Nebraska to open the season with 20-some consecutive wins? Who expected Iowa to get within a game of the Final Four? How could anyone have known — not thought, but known — that Michigan’s and Illinois’ transient rosters would click the way they did right away? But also, no matter how good those other teams turned out to be, who would have thought Purdue would lose four conference home games?

Purdue scored a handful of elite road wins in conference play, but it just wasn’t good enough at home, which is unbelievable to say.

FRONTCOURT ADVANTAGES WERE DULLED

When Purdue fortified its front line with the addition of Oscar Cluff and the return of Daniel Jacobsen, it looked as if the frontcourt would once again be an advantage, given the size and rebounding potential it had assembled. But the rebounding edge came and went, the rim protection wasn’t as impactful as hoped, and for stretches of the regular season, Purdue’s size became a defensive vulnerability.

It didn’t help that transient roster building in the modern college basketball era allowed teams like Illinois and Michigan to effectively one-up Purdue and dull whatever advantage it might have gained from pairing Trey Kaufman-Renn with a couple of true centers.

Redshirt freshman forward Jack Benter was an absolute warrior for Purdue this season and provided a measure or Grady Eifert- or Mason Gillis–type of productivity and spark, whereas his player profile would have lined up more with Dakota Mathias or Ryan Cline, etc. That value-added grit and possessions-generating was a really positive development, but nevertheless, Purdue essentially was playing four guards at times when it had to go to its bench in the frontcourt, and it struggled at times to rebound out of those smaller lineups.

This was a season where the injuries that set back young bigs Jacobsen and Raleigh Burgess kind of caught up with Purdue.

Jacobsen undoubtedly would’ve been further along had he spent his de facto redshirt year developing as a basketball player as opposed to recovering from injury. And while Burgess redshirting was clearly the best thing for him in the big picture of his career, it did take some size, energy, and versatility out of Purdue’s frontcourt mix, potentially at two different positions.

THREE-POINT SHOOTING FOUND ITS LEVEL

It was a somewhat uneven season for Purdue’s best players, as a number of its three-point shooting threats went through slumps. But at the end of the day, the Boilermakers still shot a rock-solid 38 percent from long range and got the very best of Fletcher Loyer when it mattered most, along with CJ Cox and Gicarri Harris.

Benter added real weaponry in ball-screen offense at a critical floor-spacing position, and freshman Omer Mayer’s spot-up shooting was a nice, perhaps unexpected, surprise.

IT WAS DEFENSE

Long story short: Purdue had to be better defensively throughout the season. It was better in the postseason, but still not great. It’s easy to just blame scheme or such things, but that’s always a soft target. The issue was one of personal consistency, more than anything.

When Purdue looked engaged, connected, communicative and energized, you saw what the Boilermakers were capable of defensively. When they were good, they were pretty good; they just weren’t as good as they needed to be as often as they needed to be. That’s a big reason why, at the end of the day, Purdue did not really factor into the Big Ten regular-season championship hunt and wound up as the conference’s No. 7 seed in the Big Ten Tournament.

The team’s leadership has to own that, just like it deserves credit for the postseason turnaround. But it’s one of the maddening aspects of an up-and-down season that things weren’t more even in this regard for a team that sometimes seemed content to try to outscore everyone with one of the nation’s best offenses.

In November, Purdue beat full-strength Texas Tech 86-56 in the Bahamas in one of the best defensive performances it’s put forth in quite some time. The sky was the limit for that Purdue team, but it just didn’t show up every time out, especially at home.

FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS

In the short term, the long term benefited.

Purdue’s ability to hold back Burgess and West as redshirts will prove important in the grand scheme moving forward. The likelihood that either would have played heavy minutes this season was slim and might have come at the expense of others. But it would be inaccurate to say they didn’t contribute in meaningful ways, because they wore guys out on the scout team, and their joy and enthusiasm were tangible throughout a long season for an older team that may have needed some youthful energy.

Meanwhile, getting Mayer meaningful experience, as he projects to slide into a starring role next season, was important, as was getting Jacobsen’s blood flowing again after a year spent idle due to injury. Both players will be better next season because of what happened this season, even if it wasn’t always a straight line for either of them.

Jack Benter established himself this season as a foundational piece for the Boilermaker program moving forwqard.