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Purdue

First and 10 : Southern Illinois at Purdue

On3 imageby: Tom Dienhart08/30/25TomDienhart1
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(David Banks/USA Today)

As we start the week, 10 items of interest as the Boilermakers play host to Southern Illinois (7:30 p.m. ET, BTN) on Saturday:

• Purdue has lost its last seven night games:

-2024: Indiana (66-0), Michigan State (24-17), Oregon (35-0)

-2023: Michigan (41-13); Wisconsin (38-17); Syracuse (35-20)

-2022: Michigan (43-22)

Purdue’s last win under the lights: 2022 Nebraska (43-37)

• Purdue never has lost to a FCS (formerly I-AA) school, owning a 14-0 mark. The closest Purdue has to come to losing was in 2013, when the Boilermakers slipped past Indiana State, 20-14. That was the lone win of Darrell Hazell’s maiden season.

• Purdue added Southern Illinois to its 2025 slate in June 2024. The Boilermakers will pay the Salukis a $500,000 guarantee for playing the game. Purdue had been searching for an additional game in 2025 after UConn asked to move its visit to West Lafayette from 2025 to 2029.

• The last Purdue coach to open his career 2-0? You have to go all the way back to 1916, when the venerable Cleo O’Donnell toppled DePauw and Wabash before falling at Iowa.

• This is the second season in a row and third in four that Purdue has played a FCS foe: Indiana State, 2024 and 2022. Purdue last played Southern Illinois in 2014, a 35-13 Boiler win under Hazell.

• SIU was picked to finish sixth in the Missouri Valley at league media days this summer. The Salukis were 4-8 (2-6 MVC) in 2024.

• Southern Illinois opened with a 49-3 victory vs. Thomas More, a D2 school in Kentucky. The Salukis gained 386 yards in the win, with 148 coming on the ground and 238 through the air. Defensively, the Salukis held Thomas More to 191 yards.

• SIU is one of only two FCS teams in the nation to beat FBS opponents in both 2022 (Northwestern) and 2023 (Northern Illinois), joining Sacramento State, which beat Colorado State (2022) and Stanford (2023). 

• In its history, the Salukis have won six games against FBS teams, and head coach Nick Hill has been a part of five of those wins (two as starting quarterback, three as head coach).

• Hill, 40, is in his 10th season at his alma mater, forging a 49-56 record with three playoff berths.

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