Purdue (2) vs. Arizona (1) Bracket Prediction: March Madness Elite Eight Odds
It’s a chalk NCAA Tournament West Region final from San Jose on Saturday night as No. 2 seed Purdue from the Big Ten faces No. 1 Arizona from the Big 12 for a spot in the Final Four. The Wildcats are -6.5 with a total of 151.5 on the college basketball odds.
Purdue Boilermakers vs. Arizona Wildcats NCAA Tournament Point Spread and Betting
The winner of this game will face the Midwest Region champion in the Final Four, and I’d expect that to be No. 1 seed Michigan so we could have one side of the national semifinals be an all-Big Ten affair.
Most people would agree that the Big Ten and Big 12 were the best overall conferences in the country during the regular season, so it’s perhaps fitting a team from each will face off Thursday for a trip to next Saturday’s Final Four in Indianapolis – which would be almost a home game for in-state Purdue. Its 54 wins in the NCAA Tournament all-time are the most by a school without a national championship.
Purdue leads the overall all-time series vs. Arizona 8-5, and they have split two NCAA Tournament meetings. Their last overall matchup, though, was December 2023 in a neutral-site special game ironically enough also in Indianapolis. The Wildcats were No. 1 in the country but lost to the No. 3 Boilers, 92-84. Four players on the current rosters competed in that one.
Purdue Boilermakers (2)
Purdue was the pre-season No. 1 team in the Associated Press Top 25 and seeking to be the first such school to win it all since the 2008-09 North Carolina Tar Heels. The Boilermakers won a thriller over No. 11 seed Texas in the Sweet 16, 79-77, on a Trey Kaufman-Renn tip-in of a missed Braden Smith layup with 0.7 seconds left. It marked the latest-game winning field goal in school history in the Dance.
Kaufman-Renn was amazing in the win with 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting. He became the first player in the NCAA Tournament with at least 20 points on 75 per cent from the field and to hit a game-winning shot in the final five seconds of the Sweet 16 round or later since Christian Laettner’s all-time shot against Kentucky in 1992.
The Boilers are one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country but shot a season-low 20 per cent from deep and made a season-low-tying four from out there. They have no chance against Arizona if that continues.
Purdue is making its seventh all-time Elite Eight appearance and won the last time it was here in 2024 on the way to losing in the title game. It’s the first time the school has reached this round twice in a three-year span.
Arizona Wildcats (1)
Big 12 regular-season and tournament champion Arizona won its 12th straight game on Thursday quite easily, 109-88, over No. 4 Arkansas. The Wildcats never trailed and haven’t yet in the Dance. Their 109 points were tied for fourth-most by any school in Sweet 16 history.
While 3-point shooting is a huge part of Purdue’s game, it’s not for the Wildcats as they made only eight in that win over the Razorbacks, the fewest made 3-pointers by an NCAA Tournament team to score at least 100 points since Indiana in 1999.
Arizona, which ranks near the bottom of the nation in 3-point makes (5.9) and attempts (16.3), shot 63.7 per cent from the field overall (second-best by any team in the Sweet 16 this century) and became the first club ever in the NCAA Tournament with six players scoring a minimum of 14 points. All six of them shot better than 50 per cent from the field.
Brayden Burries and Koa Peat became only the seventh freshman duo in history to score at least 20 points in the Sweet 16 or later.
This is the Wildcats’ deepest run since their last Elite Eight appearance in 2015. They haven’t been to the Final Four since 2001. That drought ends, but it should be a close one Saturday.
