Purdue gets much-deserved No.1

I wrote in this space a few weeks ago that Purdue had already proven it belongs among college basketball’s best, but that the Boilermakers — who somehow haven’t made a Final Four in the Matt Painter era — still had been flying under the radar.

This week, however, Purdue is finally getting some well-deserved shine.

It would have been reasonable to rank the Boilermakers No. 1 last week after their impressive, undefeated start to the season, but there was no doubt this week. With help from Duke’s loss to Ohio State and Gonzaga’s loss to Alabama, Purdue rightfully moved to the top of the Associated Press’ rankings for the first time in school history.

With three wins over Quad 1 teams, including North Carolina and Villanova, Purdue has emerged as one of the best all-around teams in the nation, with an All-Big Ten performer in Trevion Williams coming off the bench. They’re scary loaded and deep. And they could be at No. 1 at least through the New Year. The Boilermakers have yet to play a true road game — they’ll do so for the first time Thursday at Rutgers — and then won’t again until Big Ten play picks up in early January.

Purdue, if it wasn’t already apparent, is here to stay.

“They deserved to be No. 1,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said after his team’s 77-70 loss to Purdue on Friday. “They can hurt you in so many ways. They have depth, experience and size. It’s going to be a hard team to beat.”

The biggest climbers of this week’s poll were Alabama and Ohio State, who moved up to No. 9 and No. 21 in the AP poll, respectively, and No. 12 and No. 13 for me. The Buckeyes dropped out of the AP poll last week (and were 24th in my poll) but made up for it by beating the No. 1 team in the country.

BYU slipped to No. 24 in the AP poll and is completely out of mine after a shaky week. The Cougars lost to Utah Valley in overtime before barely beating Missouri State. North Carolina and Xavier, though they didn’t enter the AP poll, made the cut in mine. The Tar Heels look like they’re back on track with three consecutive wins, including a blowout victory over Michigan, and Xavier has quietly been impressive. The Musketeers’ three Quad 1 wins are tied with Purdue for the most in the country.

Editor’s note: Herald sports reporter Steve Hewitt is a voter in the Associated Press college basketball Top 25 poll. Every week through the end of the season, he’ll write a column providing some analysis and thoughts from his poll.