College basketball rankings: After a slow start, Purdue is heating up as it adjusts to life without Zach Edey

Purdue dropped its first Big Ten game this season, then lost two of its next three to fall to 8-4, which represented the program’s worst start through 12 contests since Zach Edey’s freshman year. Edey’s freshman year, by the way, was the last time the Boilermakers didn’t have a 7-foot-4 center averaging at least 14.4 points and at least 7.7 rebounds. So, after the uneven start to this season, some folks started connecting those dots and suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Purdue was slipping significantly now that it no longer has a two-time Wooden Award winner in the middle.

Perhaps those folks will be proven right.

As always, we’ll see.

But, it should be noted, that since falling to 8-4, the Boilermakers have won four straight games, all by double-digits, most recently Thursday night’s 68-50 victory at Rutgers in which Braden Smith finished with 16 points and 14 assists. As a result, Purdue remains No. 15 in Friday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, where Auburn is No. 1 for the third consecutive day.

Now let’s spend the rest of this space on Rutgers.

After Thursday’s loss to Purdue, the Scarlet Knights are 8-8 overall, 1-4 in the Big Ten, 0-6 in Quadrant 1 and nowhere near the NCAA Tournament bubble despite having two projected top-five NBA Draft picks — namely Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey.

Both played against Purdue.

Neither played well.

Bailey took 15 shots and missed 10. Harper took nine shots and missed seven. Those two elite prospects are the main reasons some had high hopes for the Scarlet Knights this season — but they’re quickly turning into examples of why others are hesitant to build around freshmen in this era of college basketball (though, in fairness, Duke and Illinois are doing just fine with rosters headlined by first-year players).

As Matt Norlander detailed earlier this week, if Rutgers misses the 2025 NCAA Tournament, which seems likely, and Harper and Bailey are both top-five picks in the 2025 NBA Draft, which also seems likely, the Scarlet Knights will be the first team in the history of this world to ever miss the NCAA Tournament with a roster featuring two players who were subsequently selected in the top five of the same NBA Draft.

That’s not the type of history anybody wants to make.

But, unless there’s a big turnaround, that will be the history made.