The Streak

By Leroy Bridges
Executive Reporter

No player on Purdue’s roster has beaten a ranked team as a Boiler.
It’s been four years, 10 months and 30 days since the Boilers last beat a ranked team.
For fans and media, it matters. Coaches and players, however, are insistent it’s not something they think about. Between two coaches and six players, all of them said the team’s mindset and preparation don’t change for a game against a ranked opponent.
“What we look for is try to improve as the season goes along regardless of the opponent, regardless if it’s a ranked team or not a ranked team,” said coach Joe Tiller, who is 12-36 against ranked teams in his more than 11 years at Purdue. “We don’t measure ourselves against our opponent, we measure ourselves against ourselves.
“If the media didn’t keep score like that, I wouldn’t know what the record against ranked opponents was.”

The loss that started it all
It was Nov. 15, 2003.
No. 4 Ohio State beat No. 11 Purdue, 16-13 in overtime in Columbus, Ohio.
A week after Purdue beat the highest ranked team it beat since No. 6 Michigan during the 2000 season; Purdue couldn’t supplant the Buckeyes who eventually won the Fiesta Bowl.
Purdue’s Bobby Iwuchukwu blocked a field goal at the end of regulation to force an overtime only to have Ben Jones miss a 37-yard field goal in the extra period. Looking back, Kyle Orton had his second-most famous fumble in the end zone, which immediately was jumped on for a TD with 11:23 left in the game. The TD made it 13-6 OSU. The win was Ohio State’s third of the season without scoring an offensive touchdown. Since then, Purdue has been outscored 456-257 in 15 games against ranked teams.

Senior captain Ryan Baker knows that to be the best, you have to beat the best. So, when he heard the 0-16 against-ranked-teams statistic his reaction wasn’t favorable.
“I was like ‘Wow, that’s not a good statistic. That’s a horrible statistic,” Baker said. “You have to beat good teams to do well. That is one way to measure it, yes. You have beat good teams. You have to. And that’s not a good statistic.”
Senior quarterback Curtis Painter said he doesn’t necessarily use the 0-16 record against ranked teams as a measuring stick. He did acknowledge that “great teams play well against other great teams.”
“We’re not going to go up there today and say we’re playing the X-rated team,” said Painter, whose 0-10 against ranked teams as the starting QB. “No matter what they’re ranked, we’re going to go in there and play the same. We don’t really pay much attention to that.”
Senior wide receiver Desmond Tardy has thought about it and even wondered why. The streak, Tardy said, doesn’t wear on the team, but it should motivate the Boilers.
“It means something. It means we should go out with more motivation,” Tardy said. “We want to change that tradition of losing to all the ranked teams.”

The last time it happened
It was Nov. 8, 2003.
No. 16 Purdue beat No. 10 Iowa, 27-14 in Ross-Ade Stadium.
Curtis Painter, still a senior at Vincennes High School, had verbally committed to attend Purdue University just a month earlier.
That Saturday in Ross-Ade was far from the normal Boiler win. It featured a potent rushing-attack that totaled 154 yards on 44 attempts. QB Kyle Orton threw the ball only 20 times. The result was a battered Hawkeye defense, which entered the game as the nation’s fourth-best run defense.
What many Purdue fans didn’t have in mind after leaving Ross-Ade that day was a 59-month skid against ranked teams.

Senior running back Kory Sheets proved he had no idea of the streak. When asked about it, he brought up Purdue beating the Buckeyes in 2004, his freshman season. Most wins against Ohio State would notch a victory against a top-25 team, but that season the Buckeyes finished 8-4.
Ohio State is ranked No. 12 heading into this weekend’s game, so the streak could go full-circle and end in Columbus, Ohio, Saturday.

Published in the Purdue Exponent on Oct. 9, 2008