IU won as big a game as they’ve had against Purdue in a long, long time. I had visions of Sampson and Painter starting up where Knight and Keady left off. But, Sampson’s troubles with the NCAA make that a dubious proposition at the moment.
In any case, IU and Purdue were ranked 15th and 14th and Purdue led the Big 10 with IU close behind. Now those two teams along with Wisconsin all have two losses apiece.
And IU gets a tiebreaker over Purdue in the Big Ten title race without going to Mackey to earn it.
Feh.
The Big Ten really screwed up on that one. IU and Purdue should play twice each year.
I don’t think the Big Ten leadership cares all that much about basketball. It’s so galactically stupid to do this, especially when the rivalry is heating up.
While the black-and-gold helicopter crowd is up in arms about it now, before the season it looked like the scheduling would benefit Purdue. I figured that IU would be good enough to win at Mackey this season but that IU would need the homecourt more next year sans DJ and EJ and with Purdue’s young players a bit more experienced. No one foresaw that this year’s game would have an impact on both schools’ Big Ten championship fortunes.
I had to listen to the game on the radio. The win was only tainted slightly by the fact that the announcers were for Undue Perversity.
Yeah I wish we had to play at Mackey also. Is this the first time in recent history that we haven’t played PU twice in a year?
Before the season it looked like it would benefit Purdue to only play IU on the road? I need more detail to agree with that. I mean, this isn’t like playing eight home football games (*cough*) in what’s the biggest cupcake football schedule I’ve ever seen. But we can discuss that in August.
IIRC, IU wasn’t interested in playing a non-conference home game this year so they would play twice. I believe they are playing twice next year – once at Assembly Hall in the non-conference schedule, once at Mackey in the Big Ten schedule.
The sting of Purdue playing so poorly last night (hey guys, I think you can stop with the 3’s) is only mildly tempered by the fact that IU will be scrambling next year, what with Sampson, Gordon, and White all gone and the program under some sanctions …. so they should win both games.
Before the season, it appeared that IU would be a Big Ten title contender in 2007-08 and that Purdue would not. In other words, it was expected that this year’s game would have no Big Ten championship implications for Purdue but that next year’s might. Of course, Purdue is ahead of schedule, so it turns out that it hurt Purdue to play only in Bloomington this year.
In other words, I’m not viewing the 2007-08 schedule in isolation. I’m saying that given the lack of home-and-home for the next two years, Purdue, if given a choice, would have played the games in the order they were scheduled.
OK, I get it now – you’re coming at it from the Big Ten perspective. Guess I haven’t put much weight in the Big Ten title …. Gene Keady won lots of Big Ten titles and couldn’t do jack in March.