Even my girlfriend will know not to call me tonight from 6:00 to about 8:30 unless it’s to talk about how much Matt Painter looks like a ferret or how stupid of a nickname Boilermakers is. For those two and a half hours, I will have worked myself into a nearly rabid frenzy because, simply, it doesn’t get much bigger than tonight’s Purdue/Indiana game.

Forget that with a win my Indiana Hoosiers could claim a piece of the Big Ten title coming down the homestretch of the regular season, forget that this is the best Purdue has been in the past ten years, forget that it’s likely Kelvin Sampson’s last game as Indiana basketball head coach. This is about a rivalry. A basketball game that will be filled from the opening tip with, if I might borrow an SEC phrase, “Clean, old fashioned hate.”

For Purdue and their fans, (I’m really exercising every ounce of restraint that I have not to make any number of amusing cracks about West Lafayette and/or Purdue Students), this is a game about respect. For certain, Matt Painter’s Boilermakers are the surprise of the year in the Big Ten and maybe in all of college basketball but no one’s paying attention. Instead, all anyone can talk about is Indiana. Indiana’s season, Indiana’s super freshman Eric Gordon and most recently, Indiana’s coach and Indiana’s recruiting violation. Tonight, Purdue plays not to be the New York Islanders of Indiana state sports.

For IU, tonight’s win is a chance to knock Purdue back down to their rightful place as a second-tier Big Ten program and most importantly, the end to a perfect sports year. As an IU fan, I can think of nothing better than a year in which we upset Purdue on a last-second field goal in the Bucket game and then beat their brains out at home, snatching a piece of the Big Ten regular season title.

How big is this game? My girlfriend told me she might “catch a couple plays.” That’s big.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Indiana Hoosiers, Indiana University, Kelvin Sampson, Purdue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.