Courtesy of Purdue Athletics

The Yale men’s basketball team is flying to Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Wednesday for March Madness. Making their third appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 2016, the No. 14 Bulldogs (19–11, 11–3 Ivy) will face No. 3 Purdue (27–7, 14–6 Big Ten) Friday afternoon at 2:00 p.m.

Purdue is making its seventh-straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament, the sixth longest active streak in the sport. Purdue head coach Matt Painter has been at the helm for the Boilermakers since 2005 and is making his 14th trip to the Big Dance.

Here is the rundown on Yale’s first-round opponent:

Purdue had “sky-high” expectations this season and is eyeing its first trip to the Final Four since 1980.

The Boilermakers, which finished third in the Big Ten, rank 10th in the country, according to the most recent AP Top 25 Poll released on Monday. They started the season ranked seventh and picked up November nonconference wins over North Carolina and Villanova before ascending to the country’s No. 1 ranking — for the first time in school history — in early December. Its reign as the top team in men’s college basketball was short-lived. Purdue lost on the road at unranked Rutgers a few days later, falling to No. 3 in the next poll after a halfcourt Scarlet Knights buzzer-beater. 

“If anything, I would say Purdue has disappointed,” Travis Miller, the founder and site manager of Purdue’s SB Nation blog Hammer and Rails, wrote in an email to the News. Miller said Purdue entered the year with “sky-high” expectations of a Big Ten championship and a trip to the Final Four, which is still possible for the Boilermakers.

“The season has been downhill ever since [the loss at Rutgers], which is odd to say when we have won 27 games,” Miller added. “But the high-octane offense that we had early has sputtered at times and the defense has struggled to get key stops. Purdue eventually lost three more games — at Indiana, at Michigan State and at Wisconsin — on last-second baskets. If any one of those four goes the other way, we at least have a share of the Big Ten title and probably a two-seed right now. If two of the four go the other way, we have an outright Big Ten title and maybe a [No.] 1 seed.”

Purdue is led by a projected top-five NBA Draft pick, sophomore guard Jaden Ivey.

Jaden Ivey, a First Team All-Big Ten selection, averages 17.4 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game. In January, ESPN’s NBA Draft experts Jonathan Givony and Mike Schmitz projected Ivey as a top-five pick in this summer’s draft. Quick and explosive, Ivey is Purdue’s hope for a deep tournament run. He is shooting 36 percent from three-point range this season, a significant increase from his 26-percent average as a freshman.

Yale head coach James Jones had the Purdue star on his roster last summer with USA Basketball. Jones served as an assistant coach for the U.S. during the 2021 FIBA Men’s U19 World Cup tournament in Latvia alongside Stanford coach Jerod Haase and head coach Jamie Dixon of TCU. Ivey ranked second on that summer squad in scoring, as the 6-foot-4 guard averaged 12.3 points per game in seven games. Purdue forward Caleb Furst also played on the team under Jones, Haase and Dixon. In addition, the U19 roster featured Chet Holmgren, the star center on the No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga.

Ivey’s mother, Niele, is the Notre Dame women’s basketball head coach.

Two talented — and tall — post players anchor Purdue’s frontcourt.

7-foot-4 center Zach Edey and 6-foot-11 forward Trevion Williams are Purdue’s best players in the frontcourt, though they almost never play at the same time. Edey was a Second Team All-Big Ten team selection, while Williams earned a spot on the third team last week. Edey starts, while Williams, the Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year, typically comes off the bench.

“Edey and Williams generally cannot be guarded one-on-one by anyone,” Miller said. “When teams double, that leaves shooters open, and when the team has been on, those shooters have delivered. Trevion Williams not only has great post moves, he is an elite passer for a big man.”

Edey averages 14.6 points and 7.8 assists per game. His offensive rebounding percentage of 20.5 ranks first among all players in Division I men’s college basketball, per ratings site KenPom. Williams averages 11.7 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.1 assists in only 19.8 minutes per game. In ESPN’s January mock NBA Draft, Williams and Edey came in at 45th and 46th, respectively.

Edey is just three inches shorter than the tallest NBA players of all time — Gheorghe Muresan and Manute Bol both stood at 7-foot-7 — but actually not the tallest player in college basketball as Western Kentucky’s Jamarion Sharp stands seven feet and five inches. 

“The kid Edey is ginormous, he’s just so big,” Yale coach Jones told the News after Yale learned about its first-round matchup Sunday night. “We’re gonna need a dump truck to get him out of the paint because he’s just so big.”

Purdue’s offensive metrics are some of the best in men’s college basketball.

The Boilermakers boast one of the strongest offenses in the country, ranking third in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency metric. Purdue sits at 13th in points per game at 79.8, one spot behind Ancient Eight rival Princeton, whom the Bulldogs defeated to win the Ivy title last week. Much of the scoring comes from the aforementioned trio of Ivey, Edey and Williams. The three lead the team in scoring, combining for 43.7 points per game.

“They’re incredibly versatile, incredibly big and incredibly well coached,” Incarnate Word head coach Carson Cunningham said of this year’s Boilermakers team in a phone interview with the News. His Cardinals played at Purdue in December, falling 79–59. A Purdue men’s basketball alumnus, Cunningham also earned a master’s degree and doctorate in history from the school.

Senior guard Sasha Stefanovic adds an element of outside shooting — the Indiana native has been a consistently excellent three-point shooter his entire career. This year, Stefanovic has knocked down 39 percent of his attempts beyond the arc, launching over six per game. For context, Yale guard Azar Swain ’22, the Bulldogs’ leading scorer, has been shooting an average of 6.5 threes per game at about 35 percent this season.

As a team, Purdue is sixth in the country in total field goal percentage at 49.3 percent and fourth in three-point percentage at 39.1 percent. If there is any silver lining for the Bulldogs, it lies in Purdue’s defense, which ranks 99th in adjusted efficiency by KenPom and not nearly as strong as the Boilermaker offense. Yale’s defensive efficiency, the best in the Ivy League, ranks 102nd nationally. The Boilermakers allow opponents to shoot 42.7 percent from the field, 153rd in the country. 

Miller said he thinks Purdue has improved defensively in recent weeks but still struggles to switch on screens, allowing opponents open looks.

“Basically, Purdue needs to get to 70 points,” Miller said. “In all seven losses it failed to crack 70, and we are just 3–7 in games where we fail to score 70. When the offense is rolling — Williams and Edey are dominant, Ivey is being Ivey and the role players are nailing open threes — we’re very, very hard to beat.”

Yale has played one game against Purdue in program history. The Bulldogs lost that December 1962 matchup, 76–66.