Marquette To Host Purdue In The Gavitt Tipoff Games

On Tuesday afternoon, everyone’s favorite schedule news maven did what he does best and tip everyone off about some college basketball non-conference schedule news.

According to CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein, the 2019 Gavitt Tipoff Games lineup is set. Mr. “THIS IS MARCH” says that Marquette will be involved, and they will be playing host to Purdue.

For those of you who are smart and intelligent people (that’s all of you, because that describes everyone who would read a good internet site like this one), you’re already saying “Hey, wait one damn minute.” Run with that emotion, because you are 100% correct: Marquette has already played Purdue in the Gavitt Games, and to top that off, the game was in Milwaukee.

The Gavitt Games series has an eight year cycle. Marquette is going to play in six of those years. This is Year Five, and instead of giving Marquette one of the 10 non-Wisconsin Big Ten teams that they haven’t played previously, someone in the decision making office decided to just go with one a second time. I actually feel really bad for Purdue here, because they’re only going to make four appearances in the Gavitt Games, and (theoretically) both of their road trips have now been spent in Milwaukee.

I say this with 100% sincerity: I would have rather seen Marquette scheduled against Rutgers.

Yes, even if the game was at the RAC.

Hopefully Jon Rothstein is back in his “Marquette vs Utah” stash and this is all horribly wrong.

UPDATE: Rothstein is NOT wrong, and also we now have a game date: November 13th.

Here’s the rest of the lineup, according to Rothstein:

Villanova at Ohio State
Creighton at Michigan
Providence at Northwestern
DePaul at Iowa
Michigan State at Seton Hall
Penn State at Georgetown
Minnesota at Butler

As for the Marquette-Purdue matchup, well, the Boilermakers are probably going to be pretty good in 2019-20. Gary Parrish from CBS Sports has Purdue at #18 in his preseason top 25 and 1 which was updated following RJ Hampton’s decision to head to the NBL instead of college basketball earlier in the day on Tuesday. So that’s a very up to date decision by Parrish there.

Purdue is coming off of an Elite Eight run that ended in an overtime loss to eventual national champions Virginia, and yes, they’re losing Carsen Edwards and Ryan Cline, their top two scorers. Edwards did a whole hell of a lot for the Boilermakers last season, finishing the year at #3 in the KenPom.com Player of the Year rankings. Head coach Matt Painter will have to figure out a way to redistribute things a bit, but Purdue has won at least 25 games in each of the past four seasons. I trust him to be able to put a handle on it. His recruiting class for 2019 isn’t anything particularly jaw-dropping, but if Painter ends up with a team that’s better than the sum of its parts, then Purdue should be able to find their way into the NCAA tournament yet again.

You can read more about the all-time Marquette-Purdue series in the Gavitt Tipoff Games look ahead we wrote back in 2014, but here’s the big takeaway: MU is 0-9 all time against Purdue after the 86-71 loss at the Bradley Center in November 2017.