DETROIT — Oh, gosh, here’s Purdue again, orienteering into the thick-forest portion of the brackets. You might cringe hoping it brought proper kerosene and stalwart GPS. You might marvel that it keeps trying.
Thirty-one times in the 44 years since Purdue reached the 1980 Final Four under the great coach Lee Rose, whereupon Rose made off for South Florida and a doubled salary, the Boilermakers have toted their sturdy fans into the brackets. Thirty-one times, they have sputtered out shy of the Final Four as the brackets have come to resemble the taiga. Eighteen times, they have toppled to a lower seed, which will confront them Friday night when they take their No. 1 against Gonzaga’s No. 5 in a Midwest Region semifinal. Five times, they have lost in overtime. Twenty-four different programs have bounced them. This irresistible meanie of a tournament has spent the yawning track of time since 1980 telling Purdue no eight times in the round of 64, 12 times in the round of 32, eight times in the Sweet 16 and thrice in the Elite Eight.
“Well, your expectation is your best season,” the unbreakable Purdue coach, Matt Painter, said Thursday. “So this is my 19th season at Purdue, so if we don’t win the Big Ten or get to an Elite Eight, we had a bad year. It’s harsh, but it’s the way it is. So you just want to keep moving that bar so like — you know, some of the [coaches] that get treated unfairly, I’d love to be them. I’d love to be someone who wins a national championship and goes to Final Fours and then you get to a Sweet 16 and like, ‘What the hell happened?’ I’d love to have that issue, right? But that’s what we’re working towards.”
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Only two men have coached Purdue across those 44 years when a rasher place might have made it quadruple that. Gene Keady went 25 seasons with six Big Ten championships and 512 wins. Painter has gone 19 seasons with five Big Ten championships and 444. That’s 956 wins with, somehow, zero in the Elite Eight. It’s a spiteful wrinkle of the cosmos that has remained nationally quiet while irrationally enduring. It has a thousand reasons, and it has no reason at all.
Only Purdue hardboots, who by definition would have to rank among the nation’s best fans, would know that Purdue has lost in March to Auburn just after Charles Barkley left and to Texas not long before Kevin Durant arrived. It has lost to both “Memphis State,” when it went by that name, and “Memphis,” after it started going by that. It has lost to the great Grant Hill, to the great John Chaney twice, to national-champion teams from Florida (2007) and Duke (2010) and Virginia (2019), to Kansas thrice (under both Roy Williams and Bill Self), to Chris Beard twice (once while coaching Little Rock, once Texas Tech). It has lost to the Arkansas of Eddie Sutton, the Georgia of Tubby Smith, the Connecticut of Jim Calhoun, to the ascendant VCU of Shaka Smart.
It has lost, mind-bogglingly, via a Nolan Ryan pass from Kihei Clark to Mamadi Diakite.
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You know you’ve suffered when you’ve lost because of a play whose chaotic diagram became a T-shirt.
Once, in 2000, in a non-picturesque West Region final in Albuquerque between teams seeded eighth and sixth, kismet came right to two doorsteps. Either Wisconsin Coach Dick Bennett or Purdue Coach Keady would reach a first Final Four.
Bennett did, 64-60.
“Badgers Bore Into Final Four,” The Washington Post’s headline went.
“Who would have thought this was possible?” said Wisconsin guard Jon Bryant, his team having placed sixth in the Big Ten. He had just erupted for 18 points.
By now, of course, Purdue has exited both to Bennett and to Bennett’s son (Virginia, 2019). It has suffered like few others in the who-would-have-thought-this-was-possible sweepstakes, a theme that has deluged it in the 2020s, forcing Painter to explore his own deep well of dignity.
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In 2021 in Indianapolis, in the first round, No. 4 seed Purdue lost, 78-69, in overtime to No. 13 seed North Texas, whereupon Painter began: “Well, congratulations to North Texas. I thought they played a great game.”
In 2022 in Philadelphia, in the Sweet 16, No. 3 seed Purdue lost, 67-64, to No. 15 St. Peter’s, whereupon Painter began: “I want to congratulate St. Peter’s. I thought they were excellent today in their effort.”
In 2023 in Columbus, Ohio, in the first round, No. 1 seed Purdue lost, 63-58, to No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson, which like St. Peter’s resides in New Jersey, whereupon Painter began: “Want to congratulate Fairleigh Dickinson on the win. I thought they played excellent.”
The 7-foot-4 topographical formation Zach Edey chimed in that night: “Saw a lot of times today they would have one dude guarding from behind and basically one dude sitting in my lap.” In a month of somber locker rooms, that locker room felt … really somber.
Now Edey alights here, alighting as few alight, with upgraded touch and another year of honing. “On paper, obviously, it’s very similar to last year’s team,” he said Thursday. “But like the things how we run our offense, how we play defense, everything about this team is completely different. Obviously, [our freshmen] became sophomores, so, like, kind of their body gets more used to it. The game slows down for them. They understand more things. Then the addition of Lance and Cam has really given us a pop,” meaning Lance Jones, a fifth-year veteran who played at Southern Illinois, and Cam Heide, a redshirt freshman from Minnesota.
Purdue had the gorgeous stat of 29 assists in a second-round, 106-67 annihilation of Mountain West champion Utah State on Sunday. “Man,” Gonzaga Coach Mark Few said, “[the past] certainly hasn’t affected them in this tournament. They’ve been lights out so far in these first two games. Now I think all that stuff’s off, and now they’re [just] playing.”
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They’re playing with a few scars while Painter coaches with more scars and some fans watch with scores of scars. “We’ve been beat up a lot, or I’ve been beat up a lot, for the people that have beaten us,” Painter said Thursday. “‘We’re the higher seed, we should win,’ this and that. I always say that takes away from your opponent. That’s not fair to them. Like, they’ve earned it. We didn’t get cheated out of anything. Somebody beat us. So I think for us, the most important thing to do and what we’ve always tried to do is be honest with ourselves in evaluation and no matter how your season ends so you can hopefully make those corrections.”
Now here’s another second weekend, now opposite Gonzaga, which has luxuriated in being disregarded and toted its No. 5 seed to a timely peak. “Our connectivity and our synergy is on a whole ’nother level than it was when we were playing our fourth game against Purdue,” Gonzaga big man Graham Ike said.
Purdue won that game, 73-63, in Honolulu back in November.
If it doesn’t win twice here in Detroit, it will not disband operations. It will try yet again.
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