Purdue’s Quiet Dominance Over IU

We here at Hammer and Rails focus mainly on Men’s Basketball and Football. It’s a bias and we know it. A lot of it is because we simply aren’t competent enough to do justice to what’s going on in sports like Volleyball, though with Rachel back that will change, wrestling, or swimming and diving. Instead we would point you to the Purdue sports website or other websites that are better at this than we are. Today though I want to point out that quiet dominance that Purdue has had over IU in a number of sports.

Every year the two schools face off for the Governor’s Cup. This is a less heralded trophy but is related to the total head to head matchups between the schools in all sports. When reviewing these recently I noticed a trend. Purdue has been fairly dominating in a number of sports. Let’s take a look shall we?

First off is of course men’s basketball. Purdue has won 11 of the last 12 in the series against the Hoosiers. In fact the men’s team has not lost to their rivals to the south since 2/20/2016. Barack Obama was president at that time. IU lost every men’s basketball game against Purdue during an entire presidential administration! Let’s hope that trend continues under a new administration when the two teams meet for the second time later this season.

Women’s golf has been one of the most dominant and nationally powerful teams at Purdue in recent years. They won the National Title in 2010 and have been in the hunt numerous times since. They consistently have a great team out on the links. As far as playing IU the team hasn’t lost to IU in the last 10 years. They don’t have a normal one on one contest but decide the Governor’s Cup point by using the Big Ten Championship standings. Purdue has finished higher than IU eight times in the last 10 years with one tie and one cancellation. Purdue has finished higher than IU in every season since 2005. That’s as far back as I can find the standings.

In Purdue Volleyball the teams place twice a year much like they do in basketball. That means in the past 11 years the teams have played 22 times. Purdue has won 21 of the last 22. The lone loss for the Boilermakers in this timeframe was 10/16/2012. That means it’s been over eight years since the Hoosiers took down Dave Shondell’s team. Shondell has built a hell of a program and as a bonus is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. If you’ve got a chance to watch Purdue on TV or maybe in the future go to watch a game at the Boiler Box I can’t recommend it enough.

Finally, this leads us to Purdue wrestling. The Big Ten is THE conference for wrestling. It’s very hard to crack the top of the conference here. Purdue though has been building a great program over the years. Over the last 11 meets between the two teams Purdue is 11-0. In the most recent matchup the 17th ranked Boilermakers won nine of the ten matches and utterly dominated the Hoosiers. This 11-0 run is the longest run for either team in the series since 1928. That’s pre-WWII! Crazy.

While the coverage here may tilt to the sports we know and can more easily cover that doesn’t mean that these other sports aren’t important. Purdue has fine men and women in all sports and they all deserve our praise for the work they put in. If you’ve got a chance to check out some of these other sports I highly encourage it. BGOE!