For the third straight season, the Big Ten Player of the Year award will reside in West Lafayette. Purdue junior guard Braden Smith was named Big Ten Player of the Year on Tuesday, per a release from the conference.

The standout point guard follows Zach Edey, who took home the award during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons. It is the first time in Big Ten history that one program has had the winner for three consecutive years.

Purdue's all-time assists leader is coming off his best season to date, averaging 16.3 points, 8.8 assists, 4.7 rebounds, and 2.3 steals per game, while shooting 44.5% from the field and 39.7% from three-point range. The junior set career-highs in points, assists and field goal percentage. Smith finished the regular season as a top ten scorer in the conference and second in the country in assists.

Smith becomes the sixth Boilermaker to earn Big Ten Player of the Year since its inception in 1985, joining Edey (twice), Caleb Swanigan (2017), JaJuan Johnson (2011), Glenn Robinson (1994), and Steve Scheffler (1990). He is the first guard to win the award in program history and only the third point guard in the conference to do so since 2010, joining Trey Burke and Cassius Winston.

Smith also earned All-Big Ten first-team honors for a second year in a row, marking the tenth first-team selection for the Boilermakers in the last ten years. He was joined on the all-conference team by Wisconsin's John Tonje, Northwestern's Nick Martinelli, Trey Kaufman-Renn, Nebraska's Brice Williams, Maryland's Derik Queen and Michigan's Vlad Goldin.

While Braden Smith looked happy when Big Ten Today interviewed Smith about his Big Ten Player of the Year Award, it was still all business for Smith and Purdue heading forward.

"It's an amazing accomplishment. It's an amazing award," Braden Smith said.

In the time it took Smith to blow by his defender in his award winning, junior campaign that saw him set Purdue's all-time assist record and the Big Ten record for assists per game, Smith was back to focusing on the only thing he really cares about when asked about his team's mindset heading into tournament play.

"It's anotehr game," Smith said. "We've gotta win games either way. If we do our. job we'll be where we should be."

Purdue's Big Ten Tournament will start on Thursday nigth when it will play the winner of USC and Rutgers.