Purdue basketball enters the 2025-26 season with perhaps the highest expectations in program history. That is saying something over the last few years with a double National Player of the Year in Zach Edey. It is entirely possible, maybe even likely, that the Boilermakers will be the preseason No. 1 team in the country, giving them a No. 1 ranking in four of the past five years.
In 2024-25 Purdue played a brutal non-conference schedule and it dropped a non-league regular season game for the first time since 2020-21. Today the non-conference schedule for 2025-26 was dropped, and it is once again a tough one:
October 24 - at Kentucky (Exhibition)
October 29 - Indianapolis (Exhibition)
November 4 - Evansville
November 7 - Oakland
November 13 - at Alabama
November 16 - Akron
November 20 & 21 - Baha Mar Championship (Full four-team field not announced, but reportedly Wake Forest and Memphis are in the field).
November 28 - Eastern Illinois
December 6 - Iowa State
December 13 - Marquette
December 20 - vs. Auburn (Indy Classic, Gainbridge Fieldhouse)
December 29 - Kent State
As usual, there are two Big Ten games to bea nnounced in the late November/early December part of the schedule as well, s the November 20-December 20 stretch is an absolutely brutal one.
All told, Alabama, Akron, Iowa State, Marquette, Auburn, and Memphis were all 2025 NCAA Tournament teams. Auburn reached the Final Four, while Alabama was an Elite Eight team.
Purdue will play in-state foe Evansville for the first time since December 2005, and they are one of two in-state Division I teams Purdue has not beaten under Matt Painter (the other being recent move-up Southern Indiana). Oakland made the 2024 Tournament and upset Kentucky in round one. Kent State was in the tournament as recently as 2023. Wake Forest also has a Purdue connection with Myles Colvin transferring there.
This is a schedule built to earn Purdue a third No. 1 seed in four years to the NCAA Tournament. It has the strength to set the Boilermakers up quite nicely for March, and if Purdue wins the Baha Mar tournament it will be the fifth straight early season tournament win for the Boilermakers.
