“To get to the Final Four, you have to be lucky … and Purdue has not been lucky.” ByPatForde recently spent time with the Boilermakers’ program and wonders if this year will finally bring a breakthrough:
They care about football, but this is primarily a basketball school in basketball country, and it has been since nearly the dawn of basketball time. West Lafayette is part of a fertile crescent in northwest Indiana, where high school basketball first gained popularity more than a century ago and with the first eight winners of the fabled state tournament all coming from that area. In modern times, the Purdue campus is ideally situated between the talent hotbeds of Indianapolis and Chicago.
“We broke every huddle that year with, ‘Final Four!’” Hummel recalls. It was the overriding focus, and an increasingly attainable goal until a game at Minnesota on Feb. 24. The scene: Carried to the brink of deliverance by a heroic performance from guard Carsen Edwards, Purdue led No. 1 seed Virginia 70–67 in the regional final in Louisville. A missed free throw by 70% shooter Ryan Cline with 17 seconds remaining left the door open just a smidge for the Cavaliers, but 12 seconds later the Final Four was close enough for the Boilermakers to touch it.
Virginia won in overtime, on the way to a breakthrough national title after the historic first-round ouster against UMBC the year before. Edwards scored 42 points and averaged 34.8 in the tournament, but a missed three and a turnover in the final 10 seconds of OT helped the Cavaliers escape and make their own history.
In 14 NCAA appearances from 1983 to ’98, Keady never had a team go farther than its projected seeding. Only three times in that stretch did Purdue even get as far as projected, in ’83 , ’93 and ’97 . Eleven times, the Boilermakers fell short of expectations, including as No. 1 seeds in 1994 and ’96. The ’94 team was No. 3 in the nation heading into the tournament, riding superstar Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson. His 30.
But when it came to recruiting, Knight didn’t reciprocate Painter’s ardor. There wasn’t much initial interest out of Bloomington in the skilled but slow-footed guard at Delta High School, and Keady made a strong impression on a family of Hoosiers fans during his home visit. After that, Painter’s dad opined it might be time to stop holding out for late interest from Indiana and take what Purdue was offering.
His first job was as an assistant coach in 1993 at Division III Washington & Jefferson, where the pay was so meager that Painter did some work as a forklift operator for extra cash. He eventually hooked on with Bruce Weber, who had been an assistant at Purdue during Painter’s playing days, at Southern Illinois. When Weber got the Illinois job, Painter became the SIU head coach.
With Edey and 6'10" Trevion Williams sharing the center position, opponents must pick their poison. Double the big men and leave shooters open on a team that is the nation’s fourth-most accurate from three-point range? Or take your chances single-covering the post? There are no easy answers, and that’s before factoring in the third element of one of the best offensive teams in the country.
Ivey’s jaw-dropping improvement from freshman to sophomore seasons has him ticketed for the NBA draft lottery, likely as high as within the top-five picks. That adds some urgency to this season. Talents like him don’t come every year or, in Purdue’s case, every quarter century. Robinson was the No. 1 pick in the 1994 draft, and since then the Boilermakers have had 10 players selected, none of them higher than 26th.
But doubt was accrued as well. For as well as Purdue played at the offensive end, they have had some glaring deficiencies when it comes to stopping opponents. That contributed to losing the No. 1 poll ranking and sliding to ninth at the end of the regular season. Heading into the NCAA tournament, Purdue ranks 100th nationally in defensive efficiency, according to Pomeroy. Historically speaking, it is a prohibitively bad number for winning the national title or reaching a Final Four.
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