A 7 feet 4 inches baller who is extremely good at double-doubles, quite interesting. Though the Purdue Boilermakers lost the Championship Finale last season to the UConn Huskies, fans wouldn’t shy away from admitting that they were a treat to watch. Powered by Zach Edey, they rose from the ashes and had their best season in decades. However, now that the Memphis Grizzlies have drafted Edey, his successor Braden Smith is finding it difficult to fill his shoes.

On Tuesday’s episode of The Field Of 68: After Dark, Cam Smith, Jeff Goodman, Ant Wright, and Mike LaTulip discussed who they would bet on in the Big Ten and unfortunately, none of them named the favorites Purdue.

“If I had a house, I would probably be safer and go with Purdue, and Matt Painter. But since I don’t have one, I’m rolling the dice in Illinois here,” Goodman stated. Giving the reason for his choice, Goodman stated, “I love their upside, their talent, their scoring ability, their depth, they’re interchangeable.”

Though Purdue is the top-ranked team with a +400 tally on BetMGM, Goodman chose to side with Illinois, joking that he didn’t have a house, so he need not play safe. Meanwhile, Illinois with a +900 tally is based at the sixth place in BetMGM betting rankings. Even Goodman, who has been a huge advocate of the Boilermakers in the past, didn’t want to roll the dice on the team.

“I touched on it earlier. Point guard- pros, on the wing shooting, positional size good, front court I’m picking Illinois,” LaTulip too picked Illinois citing his reasons. “It’s okay… this is a team that in conference play has won the most games in the last five years, including Purdue. Illinois has won the most games, so I trust Brad Underwood’s ability to turn the roster over like he has. I love the pieces that they’ve gotten. They check those boxes that I mentioned, and if we’re just talking about value, I think plus 900 is crazy.”

From 2019 onwards, the Illinois Fighting Illini have a 117-49 record, and therefore LaTulip opined that they could do the magic this season too. Meanwhile, Purdue has had a 126-44 tally but wasn’t the favorite for LaTulip.

“Illinois was it. But after y’all picked them, I’m not picking them no more because y’all just got it. So I did have a top three. I’m gonna go with my number two, all right. That’s going to be Indiana. It’s gonna be Indiana for me. I think that they are going to be able to get through a lot of issues, if there’s foul trouble… someone goes down with injury. I think they are two and three deep at pretty much every position. Where I think they have backups, who can start at other schools, so I’m going to go with Indiana,” Ant Wright expressed on the podcast.

Indiana got the 17th spot in the AP preseason polls whereas Purdue was at 14. Nonetheless, Wright picked the Hoosiers over other teams. The Hoosiers are a deep team with incoming transfers like Oumar Ballo and Kanaan Carlyle. Meanwhile, the other stars in the team include Gabe Cupps, Anthony Leal, Malik Reneau, Mackenzie Mgbako, and Trey Galloway, with all of them having experience. Therefore, the team runs deep. But that also points out Edey’s replacement Braden Smith has failed to enchant analysts so far.

Braden Smith & Co. failed to overpower Creighton

Edey averaged 25.2 points with 12.2 rebounds per game last season. He swept the NPOY awards for the second consecutive time in 2024 and was a major reason for the Boilermakers’ success. However, after he was selected as the ninth overall pick, all responsibilities fell on Braden Smith. The point guard averaged 12 points with 7.5 assists per game last season and is expected to have a bigger role this time out. The Matt Painter-coached team was defeated 87-93 by Creighton in the exhibition game on Saturday.

While Smith had a good individual performance, he was unable to push his team to victory. He made 12 of his 23 field goals and went 5-11 from the free throw line, finishing with 31 points. It wasn’t just his free-throw shooting that was an issue. Purdue was just 15-of-24 (.625) from the charity stripe. The 21-year-old also added 7 rebounds and 4 assists. Despite this performance, analysts are not backing Purdue as they did last year under Edey’s leadership.

Matt Painter and his team will have to dig deep and find some momentum early on if they want to replicate last year’s success. And a lot of that responsibility will be in the hands of Braden Smith. It’s time for a new leader to step up for the Boilermakers.