WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Riding a league-best five-game winning streak, the Purdue men’s basketball team earned a double-bye and the No. 4 seed in this week’s Big Ten Tournament held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
The Boilermakers will be the No. 4 seed, taking on either Ohio State, Northwestern or Minnesota in Friday’s quarterfinals at approximately 2 p.m. ET.
The Boilermakers will head to Indianapolis with an 18-8 overall record and a 13-6 mark in the Big Ten standings. Purdue will not make up its game with Nebraska that was originally postponed Jan. 5, so the Boilermakers will finish in fourth place a half-game out of third. It will be Purdue’s 11th top-4 finish in the last 15 years under head coach Matt Painter.
Purdue started the Big Ten season with a 2-3 league record, but won 11 of its last 14 games to surge to its double-bye. Two of the losses came on the road by one (Maryland) and three (Minnesota) points and the Boilermakers became the first team since Illinois in 1989, to record regular-season, two-game sweeps of Ohio State, Michigan State and Indiana in the same season.
Leading the surge was All-Big Ten candidate Trevion Williams, who averaged 15.8 points, 8.4 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game while shooting 53.9 percent from the field in league play.
Helping the cause has been an outstanding freshman class that scored 593 combined points in Big Ten play, accounting for 45.2 percent of Purdue’s scoring in league play. During the five-game winning streak, the group accounted for 181 of Purdue’s 363 points (49.9 percent). The group has been named Big Ten Freshman of the Week a combined six times (out of 14 possible weeks) and is the first program in Big Ten history to have four different players named Big Ten Freshman of the Week.
Purdue is looking for its first Big Ten Tournament title since the 2009 season.
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