Indiana can't worry about Purdue. It has to make sure it doesn't lose its own relevancy.

BLOOMINGTON – The return leg of Indiana’s annual rivalry with Purdue gets the Big Fox treatment Saturday night.

And why wouldn’t it? IU-Purdue is among the most anticipated games on the Big Ten’s annual calendar, both of last season’s matchups proved box-office viewing and Purdue — blasting its way through the league chasing the chance to shed last season’s label — might be the most compelling team in America right now.

Indiana approaches the game from a decidedly different direction.

The Hoosiers have, depending upon your preference, lost six of their 10 games since the Big Ten restart, or won two of their past three, including a rousing 18-point comeback at Ohio State on Tuesday night. They are and will probably remain glaringly incomplete for the balance of this season, and Saturday’s game looks like a steep hill for the Big Ten’s youngest team to climb.

There’s been understandable hand wringing in some quarters, over IU’s fight for competitiveness just as Purdue steps out onto the national stage as not just a great team but also a remarkably well-run program. But Saturday’s primetime national billing serves as an example of the key thing Indiana has not lost, the thing Indiana cannot afford to lose: national relevance.

Suggestions Purdue has somehow overtaken and replaced Indiana in this particular conversation have actually felt firstly unfair to Purdue.

The Boilermakers have won more Big Ten championships than any other team in the conference. They’ve sent verifiable stars to the NBA. Three of the top six coaches in conference history in wins enjoyed the bulk of their success in West Lafayette, and those three (Ward Lambert, Gene Keady, Matt Painter) are all in the top 10 all-time in regular-season league titles.

Lambert and Keady are in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and Painter will be eventually. Yes, national championships are the most valuable currency in college basketball, and Purdue will have its eyes on one come March. But the idea that the Boilermakers being in ruder health as a program than Indiana is novel or new is wide of the mark.

History tells us the Boilermakers have been here before, and it suggests they probably will be again.

Indiana’s chief concern can’t be Purdue (or Kentucky, or anyone else). Indiana’s chief concern needs to be Indiana.

Mike Woodson inherited a program struggling for a sense of itself in the wake of four languid years under Archie Miller. In the nearly three since, Woodson has restored some of that.

He ended a six-year NCAA tournament drought at first time of asking. He’s recruited — with the help of a robust NIL setup — as well as anyone in his seat in the rankings era. He’s reestablished IU’s reputation in the NBA, at least to an important degree.

None of which is to suggest he has been flawless. Decisions around system and roster construction have failed him this season, the Hoosiers’ on-court inconsistency evidence of that. Woodson has failed to address longstanding questions that preceded him around the Hoosiers’ need for better 3-point shooting as a function of more modern offense. Even his best work to date amounted to finishing three games off the Big Ten title (a championship Purdue won) and a second-round NCAA tournament exit, results that fall well below Woodson’s own publicly stated high standards for his alma mater.

There’s no arguing IU doesn’t presently look like the kind of team Woodson envisions — competing to win the conference and contending for Final Four appearances.

Chasing Purdue with results doesn’t fix that. And no one would suggest the opposite, if the roles were reversed.

What the Boilermakers do have that the Hoosiers should want is a firm sense of themselves. Painter has mastered the ability to recognize the qualities in a player that will fit not just his system but his personality. He’s fostered a buy-in that’s kept players in West Lafayette even through redshirt years, or slow-developing playing time.

Results have been impossible to argue with. Across the past eight years, the only Big Ten coach who can go stride for stride with Painter in accomplishments is Tom Izzo. And while Izzo might be fighting to keep his NCAA tournament streak alive into next month, Painter is odds on to make Purdue just the second team (Michigan State the first) to repeat as regular-season league champions in the past decade.

The easiest word for what Purdue has is “culture.” It runs deeper than that, of course. It is much more complex and layered and difficult to achieve, all of which are immensely to Painter’s credit. But when you need to reduce it to something easily digested, culture will do.

That’s what Indiana can take from the present state of the rivalry. Find more of that through the process of rebuilding a roster depleted by last year’s attrition, and restore some balance to a rivalry it’s worth pointing out IU got the better of in head-to-head matchups across Woodson’s first two years.

Don’t, and there will be far greater concerns than a noisy neighbor to the north.

Whenever someone starts the blue-blood conversation in college basketball, Indiana is among the programs inevitably dragged in for reasons it would rather not be. The Hoosiers are often held up as an example of a program rapidly losing such status, if not having lost it already.

Yet what is a blue blood, if not a family living on history and inherited wealth? IU certainly isn’t elite by modern standards. Even in Bloomington, few would argue that. But games like this one still get marquee treatment, because the name involved still means something.

The Big Ten Network has Michigan at Nebraska at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. One formerly competitive Big Ten program trying to revive a dying season, against a historic also-ran desperate to change its standing.

Indiana has a lot of ground to cover to being where its rival is, without question. But it shouldn’t fear the day Purdue wins a game, or a season series, or a major in-state recruiting battle. It’s the day IU basketball disappears from the national consciousness that trouble will have really arrived. That’s the battle Woodson must win most of all.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU basketball can't compare itself to Purdue. It needs to focus inward.