REPORTING: The 2024-2025 schedule for Purdue’s Men’s Basketball team now features a match-up with Alabama.

Purdue’s non-conference schedule is still incredibly busy.

There’s an illness affecting Matt Painter and the whole Purdue basketball operations team. They just can’t fit a non-conference slate full of cupcakes in there. They’re unable to. They are incapable of doing it by nature. It was revealed yesterday that Purdue and Alabama have finalized a home-and-home series to start the next season, with the first game taking place in Mackey Arena. Well, that became even more evident.

These two teams will be playing each other for the second consecutive season. As mentioned in the tweet, Purdue defeated this squad 92-86 when they played in Canada the previous season. You may remember that in this game, Alabama made 19 of 46 three-pointers. Just an incredible quantity of threes made and taken. However, that was their yearly strategy, so it wasn’t all that out of the ordinary.

In 2025–2026, Purdue will travel to Tuscaloosa to play the Crimson Tide. This will be their first visit to Alabama since the 2009 season, when Purdue overcame an enthused Alabama crowd in the second half of the game, thanks to the recent Heisman Trophy victory of Mark Ingram. That game, which I attended along with the Paint Crew, just so happened to be the day after I got married. Your fun fact for the day is thus that.

Two teams that qualified for the 2024 Final Four and are hoping to return there will square off in this game. They did not meet in the Final Four because they were on different sides of the bracket, but I had the opportunity to observe these men up close during their game versus UConn, and I was amazed by how talented and athletic they were. Given graduation, the NBA Draft, and the transfer portal, the two teams will obviously appear extremely different, but Nate Oats is a very good coach. Purdue will have yet another chance to prove themselves.

Purdue has won three straight non-conference seasons while playing some of the most difficult matchups imaginable. They have defeated groups including Gonzaga, Duke, Alabama, Tennessee, Marquette, and West Virginia throughout that period. They’ve dominated wherever they’ve been invited, including the PK85 Invitational and the Maui Invitational. Another difficult non-conference schedule awaits us in 2019 with Marquette and Alabama already scheduled to play. As with the last few seasons, Purdue’s team identity will become apparent very quickly.