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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- The Samford University basketball team will begin play in the highly-anticipated "Padgett Era" Friday at 6 p.m. (CST) as the Bulldogs officially compete in their first game under Head Coach Scott Padgett against the Purdue Boilermakers in a season-opening showdown to be held at Mackey Arena.
 
Samford heads into the contest with a bit of momentum after earning a decisive 92-69 exhibition victory against Clark Atlanta on Saturday at the Pete Hanna Center.
 
The Bulldogs finished the home triumph with three players scoring in double figures. Junior Darius Jones-Gibson led all scorers with 20 points on 7-of-9 shooting from the field, while sophomore Brandon Roberts followed with 19 and true freshman Christen Cunningham added 13 points, a game-high six assists and five rebounds.
 
Against Clark Atlanta on Saturday in the Bulldogs' lone exhibition contest of the season, all 14 of Samford's available student-athletes received playing time and 12 scored points in the matchup. Seven Bulldogs tallied at least six points in the game, while three scored in double figures.
 
The Padgett Era will officially begin Friday as Samford's first-year skipper starts his opening season at the helm of the Bulldogs' basketball program.
 
Padgett, the former collegiate standout at the University of Kentucky, NCAA national champion and first-round NBA draft pick, was named the 28th head basketball coach at Samford University on June 6, 2014.
 
A Louisville, Kentucky native, Padgett was a first-round draft pick selected 28th overall by the Utah Jazz in 1999 and spent eight years in the NBA.
 
The 6-foot-9 forward recorded 1,142 points in four years with the Jazz before spending the next two seasons with the Houston Rockets. He played the 2005-06 campaign with the New Jersey Nets. Padgett began the 2006-07 season with the Rockets before being traded to the Memphis Grizzlies, where he finished out his career.
               
During his time at Kentucky from 1995-99, Padgett played for legendary head coaches Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith.
 
Padgett helped lead the Wildcats to the 1998 NCAA National Championship, where he was named to the NCAA All-Final Four team, as well as the NCAA All-East Regional team and All-Southeastern Conference during the regular season.
 
Heading into the 2014-15 campaign, Padgett's Bulldogs boast three seniors (Michael Bradley, Brandon Hayman and Tyler Hood), as well as a trio of juniors, all of which transferred to Samford from a junior college in the summer (Marcus Johnson, Darius Jones-Gibson and Jamal Shabazz).
 
Knowing that Samford had an abundance of new faces on its roster this season, Padgett accepted an offer to play in the prestigious 2014 Summer of Thunder competition in the Bahamas from Aug. 18-20 in Nassau. Samford completed the event with a perfect 3-0 record as the Bulldogs averaged 97 points per game and won each contest by an average margin of 29.
 
The Bulldogs will face Purdue on the hardwood for just the second time in school history Friday.
 
The first meeting between the teams occurred Nov. 23, 2003, as Samford opened its 2003-04 campaign with a 66-50 loss held in West Lafayette. The games between Samford and Purdue will be held exactly 3,662 days apart.
 
Purdue enters Friday's contest riding a positive wave of momentum following a pair of blowout victories in exhibition play against California (Pa.), 89-52, and Carroll College (Mont.), 90-49.
               
The Boilermakers averaged 89.5 points per game in the preseason and tallied an impressive margin of victory of exactly 39 points.
 
Purdue shot a brilliant 53.7 percent from the field in exhibition play and boasted the following four players averaging double figures in scoring:  P.J. Thompson (11.5), Raphael Davis (11.0), Bryson Scott (10.5) and A.J. Hammons (10.5).
 
Samford's roster sports eight new players this season in Johnson, Shabazz, Cunningham, Evan Taylor, Ryan Dickey, Jones-Gibson, Gerald Smith and Alex Peters.
 
Eight of the Bulldogs' 15 players are in the midst of their first season at Samford University, and only two (Hayman and Hood) have been on the roster longer than two years.
 
Two of the Bulldogs' probable starters, Cunningham and Jones-Gibson, are in their inaugural seasons at Samford. Cunningham is a highly-touted true freshman point guard from Georgetown, Ky., while Jones-Gibson, a native of Lexington, Ky., transferred in the summer from Barton County Community College.
 
Samford is returning 21.2 points per game from last season's squad that averaged 70.5 points per outing.
 
Additionally, the Bulldogs are returning an average of 10.9 rebounds per game out of a total of 32.1 from the 2013-14 campaign.
 
In percentages, Samford is returning 30.1 percent of its scoring production from last season; mainly from its top three offensive returners in Hood (7.9), Roberts (4.0) and Bradley (3.5).
 
On the boards, the Bulldogs are returning 32.1 percent of its rebounding from the 2013-14 campaign. Bradley is Samford's top returning rebounder with an average of 3.6 per game last season, while Hood added 3.1 and Hayman followed with 1.2 rebounds per outing.
 
Following Friday's season-opening contest at Purdue, the Samford University basketball team's schedule won't get any easier Sunday as the Bulldogs conclude their four-day, two-game road trip in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a noon (CST) matchup against the Pitt Panthers. Sunday's game will be regionally-broadcast by Fox Sports South in Birmingham, Alabama.

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