GAMEDAY INFORMATION -- EXHIBITION GAME 02
Purdue (0-0, 0-0 B1G) at Purdue Fort Wayne (0-0, 0-0 HL)
Thursday, October 22, 2026 | 7 p.m. ET
Fort Wayne, Ind. | Allen County War Memorial Coliseum (12,000)
STREAM: B1G+ (Jay Wilson, Brian Butch)
RADIO: Purdue Global Radio Network (Rob Blackman, Bobby Riddell)
THE SCENE SETTER
• After a successful exhibition opener on Sunday against Ball State, Purdue hits the road for the first time in the 2026-27 season when it heads to Fort Wayne to take on Purdue Fort Wayne at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum. It marks the second of three exhibition games that Purdue will play this season. Purdue has never won an exhibition game on the road.
• Following the matchup with the Mastodons, Purdue stays on the road to face No. 4-ranked Connecticut at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, Connecticut, on Oct. 27. The season opener then comes six days later against No. 15-ranked Gonzaga in Las Vegas on Nov. 2.
BOILER NOTES
• Purdue owns a 72-10 record all-time in exhibition games, but is just 2-3 against collegiate teams in exhibition games. The Boilermakers snapped a three-game exhibition losing skid to Division I teams on Sunday with an 87-55 win over Ball State. Purdue had 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).
• Matt Painter is 32-3 as the Purdue coach in exhibition games.
• Since the start of the 2016-17 season, Purdue is 27-7 against in-state schools (D-I only), including 15-1 in Mackey Arena. The record balloons to 34-7 and 22-1 if you include exhibition games against all in-state foes.
• Purdue owns a 6-0 all-time, regular-season record against Purdue Fort Wayne, but hasn’t faced the Mastodons since Dec. 8, 2014.
• 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).
• Purdue was third among “others receiving votes” in the preseason AP Top 25 poll, ending a streak of 79 straight weeks ranked in the AP Top 25. The streak had been the second longest in the country and longest in school history. Since March 1, 2021, Purdue has been ranked in 101 of the last 104 AP Top 25 polls. Two of the three weeks the Boilermakers were unranked were from preseason polls (2022-23; 2026-27). In 2022-23, the last time Purdue was unranked in the preseason, Purdue rose to No. 1 in the country just five weeks later.
• 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).
• Purdue made a school-exhibition game record 17, 3-pointers in the 87-55 win over Ball State. C.J. Cox and Gicarri Harris combined to shoot 9-of-13 from 3-point range in the win. Over the last two exhibition games dating to last season, the duo is a combined 15-of-21 (.714) from long distance.
• 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.