The Stretch 4: Auburn needs a new recipe to take on Purdue in Indy
The roles are reversed for the Tigers in their rematch with the Boilermakers. What do they have to do to get a real shot at a major upset?
INDIANAPOLIS — A lot can change in a year.
When Auburn faced Purdue on the final Saturday before Christmas in 2024, the Tigers leaned on all of their experience, continuity and size to beat the Boilermakers by 17 in Birmingham. That scoreline was flattering to the visitors, which went on an 11-0 run to close the game and trailed by 33 at one point.
Auburn went on to win the best conference in modern college basketball history outright and run all the way to the Final Four. Purdue finished outside of the top four in the Big Ten and got knocked out by Houston in the Sweet 16.
On Saturday, the two teams will meet again in very different circumstances. Purdue returned 79.1% of its scoring and 76.6% of its starts from last season. The Boilermakers have the nation’s No. 1 offense on KenPom and are 10-1 with two blowout conference wins already under their belts.
Auburn, meanwhile, returned just one player — Tahaad Pettiford — from last season’s comfortable victory in Birmingham. Steven Pearl is now the head coach. The Tigers are 8-3 against one of the toughest schedules in the country after not taking their third loss until March last season.
“You watch last year's film and think, ‘That's the recipe,’” Pearl said this week. “Well, we don't have the same team as last year, so that's not the recipe. We've got to be a little more creative in what we're doing. That's been a challenge.
“What we did last year was very effective, but we can't really execute that, because we don't have the same size that last year's team did and the same rim protection.”
But Auburn has known that for a long time. As soon as they finished their massive roster reconstruction, the Tigers understood they were going to have to play a different brand of ball in order to hang with the very best on their schedule.
“This is our fourth game against an AP top-10 team,” Pearl said. “Lotta teams that say that are getting 150 grand out of the games they play, and we're not getting that. We're intentionally doing this, which is great. … What I've learned is I'm going to fire whoever did our schedule.”
That last line was a joke, of course. But Arizona and Michigan are the two best teams in the country, and they both blew out Auburn. Houston, previously No. 1, had to hold off a last-minute surge to beat Auburn by one back in Birmingham.
On paper, Purdue might be closer to Houston than it is to Arizona and Michigan — just doing it with offense instead of defense. Yet this will be the opposite of a de facto home game, as Purdue will have the crowd advantage in Indianapolis on Saturday.
“I think it’ll be good to have experienced what we’ve experienced in the Michigan and Arizona games, and all the things that happen to allow them to get big leads in those games,” Pearl said. “We’ve got to figure out how not to do that in another tough environment against Purdue.”
After an underwhelming win in Atlanta over a shorthanded Chattanooga team last week, Pearl said he wanted to see better effort and energy in the buildup to this one. He was pleased with his team’s response to his challenge in practice this week.
“It's been really intense,” wing Elyjah Freeman said. “He's just been honest about details and little stuff that we see on film. Just trying to pick up on things that we messed up on in past games against high-ranked teams.”
What are those details that could separate Auburn from making a real run at an upset of Purdue — or taking another lopsided loss to another elite opponent?
Here’s our full breakdown of this very different rematch between the Tigers and the Boilermakers in this week’s edition of The Stretch 4 preview.