Report: Purdue Basketball to Play in 2020-2021 Gavitt Games

According to a report from Adam Zagoria of New York Times Sports and Forbes Sports (who knew Forbes had a sports section) Purdue will once again participate in the Gavitt Games during the 2020-2021 men’s basketball season. If you don’t remember, the Gavitt Games are a Big Ten-Big East crossover episode where not everyone gets to play.

This adds one additional non-conference game to a schedule that is quickly coming together. As a reminder, below is the known non-conference schedule at this point.

TBD - Rider

TBD - Yale

TBD - ACC/Big Ten Challenge (likely road game)

TBD - Gavitt Games (home game)

November 10 vs. Evansville

November 13 vs. Indiana State

November 24 vs. Illinois State, Clemson, or Mississippi State (Cancun Challenge)

November 25 vs. Illinois State, Clemson, or Mississippi State (Cancun Challenge)

December 13 vs. West Virginia (Barclay’s Center, Brooklyn, NY)

December 19 vs. Notre Dame (Crossroads Classic, Bankers Life Fieldhouse)

December 21 vs. Incarnate Word

This comes directly from our previous article discussing the addition of Incarnate Word to the schedule. The only addition is that the Gavitt Games is now confirmed. As Travis rightly pointed out in his previous post the contract for the Gavitt Games was for two home games and two road games and Purdue has already played both of their road games in this series. That means Purdue can expect a home game in the series assuming there’s no funny business afoot.

Possible opponents for the Games are listed above. A couple seem unlikely just based upon recent history. Purdue played at Marquette in both the 2017 & 2019 Gavitt Games so a rematch at Mackey Arena would seem unlikely. Similarly Purdue and Butler play every other year at the Crossroads Classic and while they do not meet in 2020-2021 I would imagine the organizers would like a bit of variety. The third game Purdue has played in this series was against Villanova.

If I had to guess merely based on matchups I would think Purdue would get either St. John’s or Xavier. That’s based on nothing but my own speculation so take that for what it’s worth (the same as what war is good for...absolutely nothing SING IT AGAIN!).

Either way, the non-conference schedule is coming together fast and should offer an interesting challenge for the suddenly very young Purdue Boilermaker team.