It’s not all football around here ya know? Fresh off their appearance in the 2023-2024 National Championship Game and another Big Ten regular season title, the Boilermakers now know their conference slate for the first season in an 18 team Big Ten. I’m not gonna waste your time, I’m gonna get right into it. Home games are in bold.
- Thursday, Dec. 5: at Penn State
- Sunday, Dec. 8: vs. Maryland
- Thursday, Jan. 2: at Minnesota
- Sunday, Jan. 5: vs. Northwestern
- Thursday, Jan. 9: at Rutgers
- Sunday, Jan. 12: vs. Nebraska
- Wednesday, Jan. 15: at Washington
- Saturday, Jan. 18: at Oregon
- Tuesday, Jan. 21: vs. Ohio State
- Friday, Jan. 24: vs. Michigan
- Friday, Jan. 31: vs. Indiana
- Tuesday, Feb. 4: at Iowa
- Friday, Feb. 7: vs. USC
- Tuesday, Feb. 11: at Michigan
- Saturday, Feb. 15: vs. Wisconsin
- Tuesday, Feb. 18: at Michigan State
- Sunday, Feb. 23: at Indiana
- Friday, Feb. 28: vs. UCLA
- Tuesday, March 4: vs. Rutgers
- Friday, March 7: at Illinois
- March 12-16: Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament — Indianapolis, Ind.
A conference slate of 20 games includes 10 on the road and 10 at home of course, but not the teams you might recognize. Instead, Purdue will, for the first time, have conference games at Washington and Oregon. These games takes place on Wednesday and Saturday of the same week meaning that the team will presumably stay out west between games. They talked about doing this during the addition of these schools to the conference and it appears they’ve followed through.
Given the expansion of the conference to 18 teams it’s a lot easier to see who play twice. And for Purdue, they play IU, Rutgers, and Michigan twice with everyone else being single plays. Purdue’s sole game against what will likely be a very strong Illinois team is on the road to end the regular season. Purdue plays Northwestern only at home which may sound like an odd thing to mention, but Northwestern has had Purdue’s number of late. Purdue will have to go on the road to Michigan State as well.
Overall, I think this is a very favorable schedule for the Boilermakers and if the sophomore class steps up and the freshman step in as we all believe they could I think Purdue has a real opportunity at another Big Ten title. What do you think of this schedule?
