WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The attendance for the Michigan-Purdue game on an uncommonly hot afternoon here late last month was 60,042. That figure would fill barely half of Michigan Stadium, but it was a capacity crowd for the Boilermakers’ Ross-Ade Stadium, their first sellout in nearly a decade.

There is hope again here, and that hope remained even after the seventh-ranked Wolverines beat Purdue handily, 28-10. Purdue, which had lost to No. 17 Louisville by a touchdown in its opener but then won its next two games, dropped to 2-2. Purdue defeated Minnesota, 31-17, on Saturday, and the victory gave the Boilermakers the same number of wins they had all of last season, and more than they had in two of the three seasons before that.

A winning regular season would be the program’s first since 2007.

“There’s been more conversation about Purdue football in the past two weeks,” the Boilermakers’ athletic director, Mike Bobinski, said in an interview before the Michigan game, “than in, you name the number of years.”

The thing is, the Purdue players are mostly the same group as those on last year’s 3-9 squad. Purdue still plays in the same Big Ten division as consistently excellent teams like Wisconsin and venerable programs like Nebraska, and in the same conference of national powers like Ohio State, Penn State and, yes, Michigan.