Two of the best teams in the Big Ten Conference — and the country — will battle on Tuesday night when No. 9 Nebraska hosts No. 12 Purdue in Lincoln, Neb.
Nebraska (21-2, 10-2 Big Ten) is coming off a 12-point win at Rutgers to snap a two-game skid following 20-0 start to the season. Purdue (19-4, 9-3) has won its last two after dropping three straight games.
The visiting Boilermakers narrowly avoided a major upset at home against Oregon on Saturday, taking the lead for good with 51 seconds left on Fletcher Loyer’s 3-pointer. The senior guard has made 10 of 14 from 3-point range the past two games and is shooting 40.6% from distance on the season.
Perimeter shooting has been hot and cold this season for Purdue, which hits at 38.5% (207 of 538) on 3-pointers for the season but is 4-4 when making fewer than eight triples.
Nebraska is even more dependent from beyond the arc, taking nearly 51% of its shots from deep. The Cornhuskers were 9 of 27 at Rutgers but shot 56.8% inside the arc, much better than in a 78-69 home loss to then-No. 9 Illinois when they made only 10 2-pointers.
Having forward Rienk Mast fully healthy helped with that. The sixth-year senior had missed Nebraska’s first loss of the season to then-No. 3 Michigan (75-72 on Jan. 27) with the flu and was not 100% against Illinois. Mast had 26 points against Rutgers after scoring a total of 25 in his previous three contests.
“It was great to see Rienk get it going,” Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg said. “For him to bounce back, our offense always runs better when Rienk has the ball in his hands.”
While Purdue’s Loyer has had big games in the past week, the engine that runs the Boilermakers is senior guard Braden Smith. In addition to topping the team with 15.2 points per game, Smith is second in the Big Ten in assists at 8.7 per game. His career total of 958 is eighth in Division I history.
But Smith turned it over six times against Oregon, part of a 14-turnover performance for the Boilermakers that was tied for most in a Big Ten game this season.
“We have to operate as a team from about eight to 10 turnovers,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “When we get to like 14, 15, 16 turnovers, it’s entirely too much. We’re beating ourself up.”
Nebraska junior Pryce Sandfort leads the conference with 80 3-pointers, already the most for a Cornhusker since Glynn Watson Jr. had 82 in 2018-19. Sandfort is shooting 40.6% from outside and averaging 17.1 points per game.
Getting to the line could be a challenge for both teams. Nebraska averages only 11.2 foul shots in Big Ten games while Purdue averaged only 11 during its three-game skid but attempted 25 free throws in consecutive games.
This will be the third ranked opponent in the past four games for Nebraska, which had the nation’s longest active win streak at 24 before dropping two in a row.
“There were some learning lessons,” Hoiberg said. “There were a lot of things we needed to address in practice.”
Purdue already has won a road at a ranked opponent, beating then-No. 8 Alabama in November, but it hasn’t won at Nebraska since December 2022.
