GAMEDAY INFORMATION -- EXHIBITION GAME 01
Purdue (0-0, 0-0 B1G) vs. Ball State (0-0, 0-0 MAC)
Sunday, October 18, 2026 | 2 p.m. ET
West Lafayette, Ind. | Mackey Arena (14,876)
STREAM: B1G+ (Gavin Connolly, Blake Godfrey, Kayla Helman)
RADIO: Purdue Global Radio Network (Rob Blackman, Bobby Riddell)
THE SCENE SETTER
• Season 129 of Purdue Basketball “unofficially” tips off this week, when the Boilermakers host Ball State in an exhibition game in Mackey Arena on Sunday. Purdue has never faced Ball State in an exhibition game, but owns a 10-2 series advantage with the Cardinals, having won five straight games dating to a December 1999 loss in Indianapolis.
• It marks the first of three exhibition games before the season tips off in Las Vegas against likely top-15 foe Gonzaga on Nov. 2. The Boilermakers will also face Purdue Fort Wayne on Oct. 22, and top-10 ranked Connecticut in Hartford on Oct. 27.
BOILER NOTES
• Purdue owns a 71-10 record all-time in exhibition games, but is just 1-3 against collegiate teams in exhibition games, last winning on Oct. 28, 2017, vs. Indiana State (94-72).
• Since then, Purdue has lost to No. 14 Arkansas in Oct. 2023 (81-77), No. 15 Creighton in Oct. 2024 (93-87) and No. 9 Kentucky in Oct. 2025 (78-65). All three of the losses have come on the road.
• Matt Painter is 31-3 as the Purdue coach in exhibition games.
• Since the start of the 2016-17 season, Purdue is 26-7 against in-state schools (D-I only), including 14-1 in Mackey Arena. The record balloons to 33-7 and 21-1 if you include exhibition games against all in-state foes.
• Purdue returns just 41 starts (21.0 percent from last year) and 34.6 percent of its scoring from last year’s team that posted a 30-9 overall record. During the Matt Painter era, Purdue has returned under 40 percent of its starters from the previous year five previous times, posting a combined 118-55 record while winning the Big Ten regular-season championship the last two times it happened (2019, 2023).
• The 41 returning starts from last year are tied for the fewest during the Matt Painter era (2018-19 season --> 26-10 record, Elite Eight).
• The Associated Press Top 25 poll will come out Monday. Purdue has been ranked in a school-record 79 consecutive weeks dating the third poll of the 2022-23 season (Nov. 21, 2022). The streak is the second-longest active streak in the country (Houston - 126; Duke is third at 64).
• Since the start of the 2015-16 season, Purdue has been ranked in the AP Top 25 in 172 weeks, tied with Kentucky for the fourth-most ranked weeks nationally (Kansas - 206; Duke - 196; Gonzaga - 187). Since the start of the 2021-22 season, Purdue’s 58 weeks in the AP Top 5 are the most nationally (Houston - 53).
• For the first time since the 2014-15 season, Purdue did not have a player named on the preseason All-Big Ten Team. The Boilermakers finished that season with a 21-13 record, a 12-6 Big Ten mark and a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament, starting their streak of 11 straight NCAA trips.
• Matt Painter (501) is just 12 wins from passing his mentor and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Gene Keady (512) on the school’s all-time wins list with 513. The earliest that Painter could pass Keady would be Dec. 11, vs. Tennessee.
• With Painter reaching 500 wins last season against Miami, Fla., in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, Purdue became the second school in NCAA history to have two coaches with 500 victories (Kansas - Bill Self, Phog Allen).
• Ball State guard Aaron Fine will return to Mackey Arena after playing for the Boilermakers in each of the last two seasons. He redshirted in 2024-25, and appeared in nine games with 11 points and three assists in 23 minutes of action a year ago.
• The exhibition game vs. Ball State is sold out, marking the seventh straight year that an exhibition game is sold out (dating to 2019-20 season).
• Purdue has sold out 15 of its 17 regular-season games for the upcoming season (Cal Baptist and USC have tickets remaining). With the sellouts announced, Purdue’s regular-season sellout streak will reach at least 113 games, dating to the 2018-19 season.