After proving itself last week and being rewarded with a move back into the No. 1 spot in the polls, Purdue lands in the Bahamas for its next challenge against Memphis on Thursday.
The four-team event at Nassau, Bahamas, also includes a game between No. 11 Texas Tech and Wake Forest on Thursday. The winners play in the title game Friday.
Purdue opened the season as the top team in the country but dropped to No. 2 after victories over Evansville and Oakland. A victory at then-No. 8 Alabama last week, followed with a win over Akron on Sunday moved Purdue back ahead of Houston to No. 1.
Trey Kaufman-Renn scored 17 points with 15 rebounds in the Boilermakers’ 97-59 victory over Akron, while Braden Smith scored 16 points with 10 assists. South Dakota transfer Oscar Cluff scored 14 points with 14 rebounds, while freshman Omer Mayer had 14 points with six assists.
Purdue had three players record double doubles in a game for the first time since December 2022.
Mayer is showing that even when first-team Big Ten Conference honoree Smith is getting a rest, the Boilermakers still can have a high-level guard running the offense.
“Omer is a big-time player and now just kind of morphing into a different (reserve) role that you’re not used to,” head coach Matt Painter said of the former Maccabi Tel Aviv performer, who was a member of Israel’s U19 team this summer. “It’s hard to come in and be aggressive right away when you sub in, but he’s starting to pick that up.”
Painter also earned his 500th career head coaching victory with 475 of those coming at his alma mater Purdue. The veteran coach has guided the Boilermakers to a 4-0 start for the fifth consecutive season.
The Tigers (1-2) opened the season with a home victory over San Francisco, then fell to Ole Miss and UNLV last week. The 92-78 loss to UNLV ended an 11-game home winning streak as the Tigers committed 18 turnovers that led to 30 points for their opponent.
It was the worst home loss in the eight seasons Penny Hardaway has been the Tigers’ head coach.
Julius Thedford scored a season-high 16 points in his first start of the season and Curtis Givens III had 10 for Memphis, but point guard Dug McDaniel scored just six points on 1-of-10 shooting and committed six turnovers.
Memphis shot 42.4% from the floor and went 4 of 17 (23.5%) from 3-point range.
“Obviously this is very tough for me because we haven’t been in this position this early in a season before,” Hardaway said. “It’s the byproduct of having a new team and I’m trying, along with the staff, to go to war every day and find five guys, find seven guys, find eight guys that can just run through a wall; just fight. We’re still trying to figure that out right now.”
Hardaway said he hopes to use the sophomore Thedford, and 7-foot-1 freshman center Simon Majok as the “cornerstones” of the team moving forward, although Thedford has been playing through knee soreness.
