Hey there, it's Gary Parrish. It's Saturday, December 2nd, 2017. Welcome back to the Ion College Basketball Podcast.

Got Matt Norlander here with me. This is the third or three podcast we're going to do this week. So if you haven't subscribed yet,

please go do that via iTunes rated favorably. Continue to write great things about me in the comments. If you do that,

we'll be best friends forever and either way, let's get into it. Big Ten Play, Open Friday night of opening night of December,

opening night of Big Ten Conference Basketball games. And among the results, Norlander, Purdue, Beat Maryland.

So the Boiler Makers are now seven and two, which suggest they've figured out whatever it is that was plaguing them while they were battling for Atlanta's last week.

Because down there they lost to Tennessee, lost to Western Kentucky. That wasn't good, but those two losses came by only a total of seven points. And since then they beat in Arizona, beaten Louisville and beaten Maryland.

So Purdue, if people were freaking out about them at least temporarily last week, seems okay right now. They look like what they're about to look like the way they're supposed to look, right?

Yeah, this is with this win now that we have a road running on the docket. Now we'll see. I expect the Northwestern Purdue Game, which is a Purdue home game,

which is too up and completed by the time we do our next podcast, which will be in less than 40 hours from now. But my point is, if you get the Arizona win in the neutral, they get a nice home win over Louisville.

A Louisville team that I still think will be in the NCAA tournament with a little bit of ease. And now a road win against the Maryland team that I expect to be a top five team in the Big Ten.

And I'm not that seven and two writing the ship. I'll also note they've got a road win against Marquette. Don't think Marquette's a tournament team, but still that'll be a nice road win on the resume ultimately.

So with Purdue, I think kind of big picture here. I had them as the second best team in the Big Ten heading into the season.

They've got a really strong chance at doing that. The curiosity with them is can they get to that elite level of three point shooting that they've got the talent to do?

They're not quite there yet. But I think that they can get there that obviously relies a lot on what the Edwards boys Vincent and Carson and Dakota Matthias, who is their best three point shooter.

What they can all do. Once they hit that next level from deep, then I think you've got a real shot for Purdue, even as an elite elite sleeper type.

But it's just so funny. GP, like I knew this was the case, but you know, you say big 10 started conference play on Friday night. I mean, we just got we just got to December. We actually have as a quick side now.

We have our conference prediction champions up at dot com right now or on your mobile app. So we normally run that in the preseason, but yeah, we decided to run it literally the day of conference season starting.

So all 32 leagues. We've got our predictions for for each team winning it. I'm a believer in Purdue overall. I do think that Minnesota solid.

We've talked on the previous podcast, but the big 10s issues overall. But I I think Purdue is a is a top 25 team and should stay in the rankings for the majority of the season.

Beating Northwestern would be big and would also be very damaging to Northwestern.

I think this is where I struggle with the top 25 and one because I do think Purdue is one of the 25 best teams or 26 best teams in America.

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