Hammer and Rails Survey Results – Purdue A Final Four Favorite?

Plus, a national look at the 2026 national champion.

The 2024-2025 men’s basketball season is over and with no time for Florida to celebrate at all it’s time to look ahead to the 2025-2026 season. I’m just as guilty as this as everyone. We have already seen a number of the way too early top 25 come out within hours of the end of Monday’s game. Again, I’m not better as I posted two questions focused on next season nearly right away. So let’s dive into them shall we?

First, I asked you if Purdue was an early favorite to head to the Final Four next season.

An astounding 86% of respondents viewed Purdue as a Final Four favorite heading into next season. We don’t know exactly the makeup of the team right now as the transfer portal remains open, but the hope is that Trey Kaufman-Renn, Braden Smith, and Fletcher Loyer will be paired with CJ Cox, Gicarri Harris, a healthy Daniel Jacobsen, and some new additions from the transfer portal including Oscar Cluff to send Purdue to Indianapolis in just about a year.

Speaking of the transfer portal, Purdue lost four players to the portal and so far has added only Oscar Cluff. Will Painter continue to look and add multiple names? Multiple European or overseas players have been floated and even a local name who played elsewhere in the Big Ten has been bandied about, but for now it’s all just speculation. Until announcements are made and things are finalized we just can’t be sure. So, I wanted to know what position Purdue needed to focus on.

It should come as no surprise that the 3 and 4 positions were the leading vote getters here. Small forward led with 68%, far outpacing everyone else, but power forward came in second with 14%. Combined, the forward positions accounted for 82% of the vote. That says something about what this Purdue team needs to be elite next year.

Finally, one national survey result. The mothership asked folks who they thought would win next year’s men’s basketball national title and the results were…illuminating.

Purdue led all comers with 16% followed closely by Duke and Houston who were the only two other teams who garnered double digits. Our friends over at FanDuel have Purdue with the 3rd best odds to win the National Title at +1400. Just above them are Houston at +1200 and Duke at +1000. However, interestingly enough tied with Purdue in third place with +1400 is BYU of all teams. I guess they are spending that NIL money with abandon.

Purdue continues to get respect nationally and next year feels like it’s already shaping up to be similar to the 2023-2024 season when there was so much pressure on the Boilermakers to make the Final Four. We could be in for yet another exciting season.

FanDuel sponsored the national results section of this post and SB Nation and Hammer and Rails were financially compensated for including these results. If you gamble please do so only with money you’re prepared to lose. Thanks and have a great day.