Purdue’s 83-80 loss to Valparaiso landed with a thud in Mackey Arena, and not just because it came on a buzzer-beating three from Justus McNair. It dropped the Boilermakers to 0-2, added a second loss to a mid-major opponent after the opener against No. 15 Gonzaga, and left a fan base trying to make sense of what it just watched.
That reaction is easy to understand. Friday’s game exposed real problems on both ends of the floor, and the frustration came fast after Valpo walked out of one of college basketball’s toughest buildings with a win. Still, it also brought one preseason Matt Painter comment back into focus.
At Big Ten Media Days, Painter drew a line to his 2018-19 team, the one that opened slowly before finding its stride.
"I kind of look at this as [2018-19], when we lost four starters and kept Carsen Edwards, then how we played," Painter said at Big Ten Media Days. "It just took us a while to get there. I hope it doesn't take us that long, but I liked the end results of that."
That team started 6-5, then turned into a conference champion that came within one second of reaching the Final Four. Purdue’s current roster is not that roster, and it doesn’t have a player like Edwards to lean on. But the larger point Painter made still applies: this is a new group, and early-season growing pains are part of the process.
The hard part is that the growing pains are happening in public, at home, against a Valparaiso team Purdue was expected to handle. That’s why the reaction has been so sharp. A program that has won at such a high level over the last decade is going to draw heat when it drops a game like this, especially when the performance is as messy as Friday’s.
But two games are still two games.
Purdue has been here before, and so have other programs that later bounced back in a big way. The Baby Boilers opened the 2007-08 season with a 69-66 home loss to Wofford, then followed it with an 83-80 defeat to Iowa State and fell to 7-4. That team still went 15-3 in the Big Ten, finished second in the league, and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Michigan State took a stunning overtime loss to a 1-8 Texas Southern team at home in 2014-15, then finished the year in the Final Four. Duke was upset by Stephen F. Austin in overtime at Cameron Indoor Stadium during the 2019-20 season and still ended up 25-6, with a chance at a Final Four run before the NCAA Tournament was canceled.
None of that guarantees Purdue will follow the same path. It doesn’t erase the issues that showed up against Gonzaga and Valparaiso, and it doesn’t mean the frustration is misplaced. It just means the season is far from over.
For now, the question is simple: can this Purdue team do what Painter believes that 2018-19 group eventually did and figure it out over time? That answer won’t come in November. But if the Boilers do turn this around, these first two losses may end up looking less like a collapse and more like the kind of early jolt that changes a season.
In Other News...
Purdue Makes A Late Defensive Change As Barry Odom Tries To Stop Slide
Purdues defensive struggles finally prompted a change after the loss to Maryland, with head coach Barry Odom moving on from defensive coordinator Kevin Kane effective immediately. Kane had been hired after the 2025 season and was no stranger to the program, having previously served as Purdues defensive coordinator in 2023 and 2024, but the Boilermakers issues on that side of the ball have only grown more difficult to ignore.
For Odom, the timing underscores how urgent the situation has become as Purdue tries to halt its slide and salvage some stability on defense. The move leaves the Boilermakers with a major staff question in the middle of the season, and it puts the focus squarely on how quickly they can reset before the next chance to respond on the field. [Read more 🡒]
Barry Odoms Purdue Defense Gamble Just Blew Up
Barry Odoms first major defensive move at Purdue has already come undone, with the Boilermakers parting ways with Kevin Kane after just nine games of the 2026 season. The decision came after a stretch of poor defensive play that left the unit under heavy criticism, and Odom has since acknowledged that bringing Kane in was a mistake.
Even with the dismissal, Purdue is still tied to Kane financially for the long haul, with his salary set to run through the end of his contract in December 2027. It is the kind of expensive misfire that underscores how quickly a staff decision can turn into a program-wide issue, especially when the results on the field never catch up to the expectation. [Read more 🡒]
Purdues Latest Collapse Exposed A Bigger Problem For Barry Odom
Purdues 34-29 loss to Maryland landed with the kind of thud that lingers beyond a single Saturday, especially for a program trying to steady itself under Barry Odom. Afterward, Odom met with the media alongside Ryan Browne, Charles Correa and DNylon Morrisette, and the mood was unmistakably grim as the Boilermakers tried to sort through another game that slipped away in the margins.
What made this one sting was how familiar the problems sounded. Odom pointed to defensive breakdowns and situational mistakes as the difference, the sort of issues that can turn a competitive afternoon into a frustrating loss in a hurry. For Purdue, the bigger concern is not just the result itself but the pattern it suggests, with the staff now facing a harder question about how quickly those lapses can be cleaned up. [Read more 🡒]