Warning: The following blog will again be unabashedly positive, so depending on your sensibilities right now following Sunday night's Purdue loss to Kansas, tread carefully from here on out.
Every season is different and every team is different, and comparing coaching performances from one season to another can be pretty silly, but if these past few months didn't represent Matt Painter's best coaching performance at Purdue - even more so than that surreal 2007-08 season - then I don't know what was.
This was the most flawed Purdue team Painter has coached at Purdue and a team he had to fight more than any other that came before, whether he'll admit it or not. This group isn't completely wired the way past teams were and didn't have NBA talent (at least not until the back third of the season) to fall back on in the absence of the program's typical identity.
Painter's best players didn't practice most of the season, retarding this team's progress during the portion of the season when teams are supposed to be making the most progress.
How was Purdue to be expected to win games without its best player, Robbie Hummel, and its point guard, Lewis Jackson, practicing?
And off-the-court tumult struck, costing the Boilermakers a starter and their best athlete at the most inopportune time and casting an annoying distraction over a team that needed focus at that point more than ever, a curveball thrown just as this team seemed to finally be clicking.
This team had every reason in the world to not make the NCAA Tournament. Six weeks ago, it was not an NCAA Tournament team.
Last night, Purdue was a minute away of being a Sweet 16 team when it was very nearly an NIT team. That team last night gave its program something to be proud of.
That credit goes to the players, but also Painter and his new coaching staff, which seemed to push all the right buttons just as the season seemed like a doomed one.
Purdue finally found itself in the NCAA Tournament, regaining that defensive-minded identity just in time to neutralize one of the nation's top point guards in Matthew Dellavedova and one of the nation's top players - and I might add, a horrific mismatch - in Thomas Robinson.
Execution breakdowns in the final minute cost Purdue the game against Kansas. It was in that position at all in large part due to a picture-perfect game plan put together by Painter, Greg Gary and Co.
Painter is rigid as a coach, stubborn, I suppose you could say. He believes what he believes and makes no apologies for it, nor should he. It works for him, as six straight seasons of 22 or more wins at Purdue proves.
But it was the Boilermaker coach's ability to adjust this season that went a long way toward making something of this season. Purdue won 22 games with a team that easily could have been cut off at 17 or 18.
He used 10 different starting lineups. Ten different guys started at least three games.
It was late January that is pretty evident that playing traditionally just wasn't working for this team in its current form. So Painter went back to his mid-major roots and put five guards on the floor.
It kick-started Purdue offensively and turned the season around. It didn't hurt that Robbie Hummel finally rounded back into form after being a shell of his old self the first half of the year.
Again, this team overcame so much, more than anyone knows.
When benching seniors you'd never think could be benched seemed like the right thing to do, Painter did it, and those players responded like Painter figured they would.
"Character responds," he'd often say.
When it was evident his long-standing modus operandi just wasn't working for this team, Painter changed.
He called off the dogs defensively and his team was better off for it.
For a coach set in his ways - in his style of play, his loyalty to seniors, etc. - it was Painter's flexibility this season that stood out.
It's up to players to improve themselves, but it's up to coaches to help them do it.
Look at Purdue. Terone Johnson was twice the player he was at the end of the season than he was at the start. So was Anthony Johnson. Sandi Marcius was pulled out of the figurative attic to be a key player in key games. And D.J. Byrd ... my lord. He went from role player to damn near All-Big Ten player overnight.
The players get the credit, but coaching has something to do with it.
A year ago at this time, the Missouri Missile Crisis took hold.
The result was a gigantic new contract for a coach who's just barely north of 40 and who's NCAA success, thanks to circumstances, remains capped at the Round of 16.
But this season, on the heels of drawing that huge salary, Matt Painter earned every penny.
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2012. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
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Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2012. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.
Check out GoldandBlack.com on
