Fueled by past March heartbreak, Purdue out to cement its legacy in Final Four

Matt Painter and Purdue celebrate Midwest Regional championship. Boilermakers face NC State Saturday in program’s first Final Four appearance since 1980. (Photo by USA Today Sports Images)

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Prior to Sunday’s Midwest Regional final victory, Purdue had not reached a Final Four since 1980.

To put that in perspective, Jimmy Carter was still President of the United States, the city of Pittsburgh celebrated back-to-back sports championships with the Pirates and Steelers having won the World Series and Super Bowl, respectively, and Matt Painter was a 9-year-old boy growing up in Indiana.

But the 44-year drought, tinged by three consecutive losses to double-digit seeds in the NCAA Tournament, has done nothing to diminish what the Boilermakers have accomplished, despite the lack of a national championship banner in the Mackey Arena rafters.

“It’s been a great ride for us,” Painter — now in his 19th year as Purdue’s head coach — said Thursday when asked to put his tenure in perspective when compared to 1980. “I think that’s what kind of gets lost. We haven’t been to a Final Four in 44 years, but we’ve won 11 Big Ten championships in that time, so you average one championship every four years.”

“We’ve been very successful. We’ve been at the top of that ladder even when we haven’t been (finishing) first. We’ve been knocking on that door and been very competitive.”

The Boilermakers, a Top 5 team for much of the season behind the generational performance of National Player of the Year Zach Edey and backcourt play from Lance Jones, Fletcher Loyer and Braden Smith, face another double-digit seed Saturday in NC State. The Wolfpack, a No. 11 seed that won five games in as many days to win the ACC tournament before scoring upsets of Marquette and Duke on their road to the Final Four, was not expected to get to Arizona, but Painter has made sure to remind his team not to take its next foe for granted.

“We’re playing an undefeated team,” he said of the Wolfpack. “The team that was 17-14 doesn’t exist anymore, the team that’s 9-0 does. That’s the team we’re playing. If we played them six weeks ago, then we would be playing that team.”

“When you start to talk about who they beat in those nine games, it’s pretty impressive. Duke, North Carolina, Virginia, we’ve played all those teams in the last couple years. Then you look at who (NC State) beat in the actual NCAA Tournament, and it speaks for itself. They’re one of the best teams in the country and they can beat anybody in the country, including us.”

What makes this Purdue team different than the prior iterations that lost against the likes of North Texas, Saint Peter’s and FDU is how Painter has raised the value of Edey by upgrading the pieces around him and strengthening his rotation. Much of that process was analytically driven, but, the coach said, player development has also played a role.

“I’ve always dove into what we’re doing and tried to pick at what we’re doing to make improvements,” he said. “When you get beat in the first round of the NCAA Tournament by a 16 seed, that doesn’t change anything. I felt like we needed some more athleticism, some more quickness and skill. We had guys that shot a lower percentage than I think they should have shot, and that’s come to fruition.”

“When you look at Braden Smith, he shot a good percentage as a freshman but he didn’t shoot much. Fletcher Loyer had a much better percentage, Mason Gillis has shot a better percentage. Their percentages weren’t bad before, but they had a chance to be elite. Now, you throw in Cam Heide, Myles Colvin…I’ve really went to a rotation of more people that can shoot the ball. I think, offensively, that raises the value of Zach and Braden, and how we piece things in.”

Smith dismissed the notion that the FDU loss lingered around the Boilermakers going into March, conceding that the Knights simply caught Purdue on a bad day. Edey was equally unsubscribing to his team being destined for a national title like Virginia proved to be in 2019 after losing to UMBC the year prior, reminding everyone that the work still needed to be put in. Bringing everything full circle, Painter reflected on his career to date and how it has fared, and concluded that even without the crowning moment currently absent on his resume, he can walk away from the mirror satisfied with how it has played out.

“When you look back and they kind of run your career, I’m happy that I have hair,” he quipped. “Then you see all the players, you see the differences, the growth, it’s pretty cool. It makes moments like this, when you go through the heartaches, it makes it worth it.”