Matt Painter has experienced almost everything during his 20 years as Purdue’s coach.
He has won nearly 500 games, five conference regular-season titles, and two Big Ten tournament championships. He has reached the Final Four, played in a national championship game, and is one of only two coaches to lose to a No. 16 seed in March Madness. He has even finished last in the league twice.
Yet, in a time when change is constant in college basketball, Painter has remained consistent due to his ability to win with a simple, tested approach and his remarkable skill in adjusting to Purdue’s strengths and weaknesses.
“It’s a really unique deal,” said the 54-year-old Painter before last week’s first-round NCAA Tournament victory. “When we win, people say we’re great at developing players, and when we lose, we don’t go in the (transfer) portal enough. It’s kind of like being married, right? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
The results speak for themselves.
Purdue has finished in the Big Ten’s top four in 10 of the last 11 seasons, made it to 10 straight NCAA tournaments, and reached the Sweet 16 six times in the last eight years. The Boilermakers (24-11) are now just one win away from their fourth consecutive 25-win season and a return to the Elite Eight, even without two-time national player of the year Zach Edey.
Fourth-seeded Purdue will face top-seeded Houston (32-4) in the second Midwest Region semifinal Friday in Indianapolis, about an hour’s drive from the school’s campus.
The Change
How has Painter stayed successful for so long?
He learned some tough lessons after his team, the “Baby Boilers,” took him to his first two Sweet 16 appearances in 2009 and 2010. Purdue lost in the second round in 2011 and 2012 and then missed the tournament entirely in 2013 and 2014 with losing records in conference play.
So, Painter made changes and returned to some of the lessons he had learned from other coaches he worked with and played for.
“At Purdue, it’s don’t look at what other people are doing, don’t get to that point. Just look at what’s the best way to recruit,” he said. “I’ve yet to meet a really good coach with bad players.
You’ve got to get good players, but you’ve got to get good people and it’s that combination. We lean more toward skill because we struggled the other way.”
The results didn’t change immediately.
While Purdue returned to the tournament after a two-year absence, some people believed Painter’s teams underachieved in the postseason because of early losses to Cincinnati in 2015 and Little Rock in 2016—long before the loss to Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023.
Different Styles
People started to see Painter in a new light when a well-balanced, experienced team helped the Boilermakers return to the Sweet 16 in 2017 and 2018. These teams reminded many of the 2009 and 2010 Purdue teams.
Since then, Painter, except for the no-tournament COVID-19 season in 2020 and the disappointing loss to Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023, has found different ways to win.
In 2019, the Boilermakers relied a lot on the sharp-shooting guard Carsen Edwards. In 2022, they depended heavily on power forward Trevion Williams and future NBA lottery pick Jaden Ivey. Last year, it was the 7-foot-4 Zach Edey who helped Purdue reach its first Final Four since 1980.
Now, they are back in the Sweet 16 with another new look thanks to the dynamic play of point guard Braden Smith, the Big Ten player of the year, and the rise of forward Trey Kaufman-Renn, a unanimous all-conference selection.
“I’m proud that the older guys get to experience this without one of the best basketball players in college basketball history,” Kaufman-Renn said after beating McNeese in Saturday’s second-round game. “I know they had something to prove.”
This success hasn’t happened by chance.
Smith won the prestigious 2022 Indiana Mr. Basketball Award over his current teammate Fletcher Loyer, but Painter was the first Power 5 coach to offer Smith a scholarship.
Two days later, Smith accepted, and by the next March, they all had to deal with the loss to Fairleigh Dickinson, which motivated last year’s deep tournament run. Now, they’re on another mission—trying to win the national championship they lost to UConn last April.
“I think it’s just the confidence we’ve continued to have in each other in this locker room and the coaching,” Loyer said Saturday. “We were playing at one point our best basketball (of the season) and we can get back to that point if we rebound.”
Back then, the Boilermakers without Edey were a top-10 team, and they could return to that level if they continue playing with the same edge they showed against two lower-seeded teams last weekend. But that’s all Painter has ever wanted: a chance to prove that old-school basketball still works in an era where transfers, NIL deals, and 3-point shooters dominate.
“We’ve been able to develop and make guys better, but we’ve just tried to get really good skill,” Painter said. “We’ve always been able to get size, for whatever reason. Now we have a really good point guard to go along with that. We’ve had some good point guards, but not to the level of him, and we just try to play off of our best players.”
