The Iowa men’s basketball team will take on No. 1 Purdue Thursday at 6 p.m. at Mackey Arena in West Lafayette.

The Boilermakers are 22-2 and 11-1 at home. Purdue’s only loss in West Lafayette, a 66-65 defeat to Rutgers, came on Jan. 2.

Head coach Matt Painter’s team has outscored opponents by an average of 17 points per game at Mackey and has won its last two home games by 20 and 16 points, respectively.

“I think at this point, anybody that plays Purdue has tremendous respect for that team and Coach Painter and the players they have,” Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery said at a Feb. 7 press conference. “Everybody knows who they have. [Mackey Arena is a] tough place to play; everybody knows that, too.”

The Boilermakers’ engine this season has been 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey.

The Toronto native, who weighs in at 305 pounds, is averaging 22.4 points and 13.2 rebounds per game — good for fourth and second in the country.

The junior’s numbers are up from 14.4 and 7.7 rebounds per contest a year ago.

As a sophomore, Edey split time with Boilermaker big man Trevion Williams and averaged 18.9 minutes per game, as opposed to 31.3 this season.

“I think it helps that he’s not splitting time,” McCaffery said of Edey. “He’s more comfortable out there. They’ve always gone to him. Even when he only played half the game, they would go to him when he was in there. He’s become much better at playing in traffic and making plays. When he first got there, he wasn’t very good at that, and now he’s passing the ball to cutters, he’s skipping opposite, he’s going quick, and that makes him that much harder to guard.”

Although McCaffery said his team will give him “as much help as we can,” the primary Edey defender on Thursday will be Hawkeye center Filip Rebraca.

Rebraca checks in at 6-foot-9 and 230 pounds, giving up 7 inches and 75 pounds to his Purdue counterpart.

“I mean, you know, you’re not going to stop him, just like any great player, but you can limit his touches, make him be less efficient,” Rebraca said. “It’s not just on me, I have to trust my teammates. I have to make him catch the ball where he doesn’t want to catch it, maybe off the block, maybe a tough pass or something. And that’s where I have to trust my teammates, that they’re gonna be there to help me.”

One of Rebrca’s help defenders will likely be graduate student forward Connor McCaffery.

Connor McCaffery, who has experience defending taller players when he plays center in Iowa’s small-ball lineup, said when Rebraca is guarding Edey he should try to “sit on his legs” and “sit on his kneecaps.”

“Try not to let him jump,” Connor McCaffery said. “Beat him down the floor, meet him early. The same things that I’m sure everybody else tells their big guys going into the game, and then he still gets 30 [points] and 15 [rebounds].”

Connor McCaffery said Iowa’s guards getting pressure on Purdue’s ball handlers, and the Hawkeyes’ overall defensive awareness will also be key.

Spelling Rebraca off the bench will be 6-foot-10, 270-pound Iowa center Josh Ogundele. Fran said the backup from London will return against the Boilermakers after a leg injury. Ogundele has not seen the floor since Dec. 21, 2022, against Eastern Illinois.

In Iowa’s Big Ten championship victory over the Boilermakers last season, Edey and Williams combined to play all 40 minutes and score 25 points. In that contest, Rebraca logged 13 minutes, Ogundele played 10, and 6-foot-11 sophomore Riley Mulvey shouldered four.