Purdue Guard Braden Smith Entering 2025-26 Season With Ridiculous Stat Line
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During last year's college basketball season, it wasn't uncommon to hear about Braden Smith breaking records, hitting impressive career marks, or making cuts for prestigious awards. But even in the offseason, the Purdue guard continues to impress with his numbers.
With less than two months until the college basketball season, Purdue associate strategic communications director Chris Forman fired off a tweet about Smith regarding his career in West Lafayette.
Smith is the only player in Big Ten history to accumulate 1,300 points, 700 assists, and 500 rebounds in a career. He still has the entire 2025-26 season ahead to add to his totals. Quite literally, there has never been a player like Smith in the long history of the conference.
Last year, Smith joined Purdue's 1,000-point club and also broke Bruce Parkinson's all-time assist record. The senior guard will have an opportunity to break college basketball's all-time assist record, set by Duke's Bobby Hurley with 1,076 assists.
Smith needs 319 assists to pass Hurley's record. Last year, he was responsible for 313 assists.
In three years, Smith has left his mark on the Purdue basketball program. He's hoping to add more individual accolades and team accomplishments to his resumé by the time his senior season concludes.
Braden Smith's list of accomplishments
It didn't take long for Smith to make an impact when he arrived at Purdue. He earned the job as a starting point guard as a true freshman for the 2022-23 season. Since that time, he's piled up individual and team accomplishments.
Smith has helped lead Purdue to two Big Ten regular season championships (2023, 2024), a Big Ten Tournament title (2023), three NCAA Tournament appearances (2023, 2024, 2025) and a trip to the National Championship Game (2024).
The 6-foot point guard is also a two-time All-Big Ten selection (2024, 2025), the Big Ten Player of the Year (2025), the Bob Cousy Award winner (2025), and a consensus first-team All-American (2025).
Without question, Smith will go down as one of the best players in the history of Purdue basketball. At a place like Purdue, that's not an easy thing to accomplish.
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Dustin Schutte is the publisher of Purdue Boilermakers on SI and has spent more than a decade working in sports journalism. His career began in 2013, when he covered Big Ten football. He remained in that role for eight years before working at On SI to cover the Boilermakers. Dustin graduated from Manchester University in Indiana in 2010, where he played for the men's tennis team.
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