Purdue’s Braden Smith breaks Bobby Hurley’s Division I career assist record in NCAA tourney opener

By Canadian Press on March 20, 2026.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Purdue guard Braden Smith broke former Duke star Bobby Hurley’s Division I assist record, picking up his second of the game and the 1,077th of his career with a feed to Trey Kaufman-Renn with 12:11 to go in the first half of the Boilermakers’ NCAA Tournament game against Queens on Friday night.

The All-American already was the only player in NCAA history with at least 1,500 points, 1,000 assists and 500 career rebounds, and he is one of two players along with Southern’s Avery Johnson to have had at least 300 assists in two different seasons.

“It is surreal,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said during a break in the action. “Happy for him. Really happy for him. He has worked really hard. He’s an unbelievable passer, man. He makes the game look easy at times.”

Last weekend, Smith set the Big Ten Tournament assists record while helping Purdue beat Michigan for the championship.

Smith picked up his first assist for the second-seeded Boilermakers on Friday night on a feed to Oscar Cluff a couple of minutes into their game against the No. 15 seed. But it seemed as if the second might never come when Fletcher Loyer missed a wide-open 3-pointer that would have done it, and Kaufman-Renn missed an even more wide-open jumper from the foul line.

Kaufman-Renn finally converted off Smith’s feed a few minutes later — and all the senior guard did was ever-so-briefly stick a finger in the air as the crowd tilted heavily toward Purdue fans gave him a standing ovation.

Smith was good enough coming out of Westfield High School, located about an hour southeast of West Lafayette and on the northern outskirts of Indianapolis — the site of this year’s Final Four — that he was voted Indiana Mr. Basketball as a senior.

Yet most of his scholarship offers came from the likes of Appalachian State, Belmont and Montana. Purdue was his only high-major at the time of his commitment, though schools such as Indiana, Villanova and Gonzaga had started to pay attention.

Did they ever miss out on a gem.

Smith and fellow Indiana native Loyer arrived on campus in 2022 and joined Painter’s starting lineup from Day 1, which put them at 146 starts and counting by the time they tipped off against Queens on Friday night. Along the way, Smith and Loyer were part of a couple of Big Ten regular-season title teams, a couple Big Ten tourney titles, and reached the 2024 national title game.

They wound up losing to UConn in Glendale, Arizona, to finish as the runner-up for the second time in school history.

Purdue still has never won a title. But that would certainly be quite the capstone to Smith’s career.

He earned 12 first-team votes for AP All-America this week, landing him on the second team. Smith was a first-team pick last year and honorable mention for the 2023-24 season, making him a rare player to receive recognition in three consecutive seasons.

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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

Dave Skretta, The Associated Press

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