While IU and Purdue battle it out every season on the gridiron for the Old Oaken Bucket, the two basketball teams have one of the best rivalries in college basketball.
The battles have been going on for 117 seasons, and the two teams renew their matchup Thursday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
“It’s not going to be for the faint-hearted,” IU Coach Tom Crean said in his weekly radio show on WHCC 105.1 FM. “This is not a game where if you don’t like contact, if you don’t want to put your body on the line, it’s going to be hard to put somebody into the game. We know what their attitude is coming into this game. We have to be, no matter who we have, whether James is back or not, we have to be at a high level of intensity, but an equally high level of focus.”
Purdue has the upper hand in the rivalry with IU. In the all-time head-to-head matchup, the Boilermakers have won 115 games while the Hoosiers have collected 89 wins. However, Purdue’s significant edge comes in large part from winning 33 of the first 38 contests between the two teams.
The programs are equal when it comes to Big Ten championships. Both have won 22 regular season titles. IU has the edge when it comes to national championships because IU has five titles while Purdue has zero.
Since 2010, Purdue has a seven-to-five advantage in the rivalry. When Thursday’s matchup rolls around, Purdue will be ranked, and IU will not. The Boilermakers have won five consecutive games when that’s been the case and come to Bloomington in the midst of the Big Ten championship race. IU is fighting to reach the NCAA Tournament.
The series has been marked by a host of notable games and incidents.
In February 1985, former IU Coach Bob Knight infamously threw a chair when IU was playing Purdue.
The two teams played each other once in the NCAA Tournament in the Sweet Sixteen in 1980. Purdue defeated IU in that matchup, 76-69, in Lexington, Kentucky. They also played in the 1979 NIT Championship Game, and the Hoosiers defeated the Boilermakers, 53-52.
Purdue sophomore forward Caleb Swanigan has become a dominant force for the Boilermakers this season. He poses matchup problems for IU as he has terrorized the Big Ten so far this season and notched 20 double-doubles, which is already good for the third most by a Big Ten player in the past 20 years.
Last week, Swanigan won his fifth Big Ten player of the week award after he went 16-of-30 from the field and made five of 10 3-pointers against Northwestern and Maryland.
“Caleb’s playing with such a relentless attitude, relentless spirit right now,” Crean said in his weekly radio show. “Playing his position, he can shoot the ball, he can drive it. He commands a lot of attention, he really does. He plays so hard. He’s a wrecking crew on the glass and he is getting to the glass to rebound the ball.”
