The Team That Hopes Defense Doesn’t Win NCAA Championships
Purdue owns the most lethal offense in Division I, but the Boilermakers’ shortcomings on defense could be their downfall
By Laine Higgins Wall Street JournalMarch 17, 2022 8:00 am ET
Purdue’s men’s basketball team has historically been defensively strong, spawning numerous Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year winners in the last two decades. Yet this year, the Boilermakers are hoping that one of the most reliable clichés in sports—”defense wins championships”—will be proven wrong in this year’s NCAA tournament.
The reason is that Purdue may be the most uneven squad in the 68-team bracket. Their offense is the third most efficient in the nation, averaging 1.21 points per possession, according to basketball statistician Ken Pomeroy. Purdue has a scoring machine in guard Jaden Ivey, likely bound to be a lottery pick in the 2022 NBA draft, in addition to a pair of sharpshooting big men in Zach Edey and Trevion Williams.
And then there is Purdue’s defense, which is as woeful as its scoring is fiery. The team allows opponents a point every time they touch the ball, worse than 98 other teams in Division I. Remarkably, that’s after some improvement—the Boilermakers ranked 126th in Pomeroy’s defensive efficiency ratings in February before climbing to their current perch at No. 99.
This ineptitude hasn’t been fatal for the Boilermakers this winter because their offense has been able to compensate for the defensive shortfall. Late in the season, the team was able to make some key stops late in games, something coach Matt Painter hopes his team can replicate in the tournament environment.
Purdue coach Matt Painter reacts during a recent game.
What’s so befuddling is that it wasn’t always this way. For starters, Painter is regarded as one of the best defensive-minded coaches in college basketball. In February, Painter said his current team’s defense was driving him “certifiably crazy."On top of that, a Purdue player won Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year five times during Painter’s tenure. Chris Kramer, who played from 2006 to 2010, even won twice. Players like him see how the Boilermakers’ defensive woes could undercut what has otherwise been one of its best seasons in years. “The team that can beat Purdue, in my opinion, is Purdue,” said Kramer, now a professional player in Spain.
The urgency that the Boilermakers play with when scoring doesn’t translate when they’re on the other end of the court, added Kramer. It leads to opponents scoring lots of points on Purdue in transition.
Even when Purdue has a chance to set its defense, things tend to break down when opponents run screens to kick the ball out to the perimeter or roll around for an easy layup. Edey and Williams loom big, but they’re not as fast as the guards driving past them to the basket. Purdue, which plays man-to-man defense, is also not great at rotating assignments when a double team appears.
Rapheal Davis, one of Painter’s award-winning defenders who played from 2012 to 2016, said that he’s noticed that Purdue’s defenders “sometimes get lost watching the ball.”
“The biggest thing that could help Purdue overall is their communication,” Kramer said. “People need to be talking to each other…instead of everybody flying around and creating chaos. That’s why Purdue gives up open shots.”
The Boilermakers field a big lineup with Edey and Williams. Both are nightmares in the paint on offense, but they’re not blocking centers on the other end of the court. They’re better at using their size to “alter shots more than they block them,” said Davis, compared with the excellent rim-defenders Painter has relied upon in previous seasons.
Michigan State guard A.J. Hoggard puts up a shot against Purdue center Zach Edey.
PHOTO: DARRON CUMMINGS/ASSOCIATED PRESSCompounding matters, forcing turnovers and getting steals isn’t central to this Purdue team’s scheme. Rather, they have a tendency to commit sloppy turnovers and get forced into playing transition defense. It was a problem in Sunday’s Big Ten Tournament championship game, where the Boilermakers lost to Iowa 75-66 after committing 17 turnovers to the Hawkeyes’ six.
“They don’t necessarily have the guys to sprint back in transition when they have those two big horses in the middle,” Davis said.
Painter is a coach whose strengths lie in coaching defense and has fielded one of the stingiest units in the Big Ten during his 17 seasons in West Lafayette, Ind. That’s why, even with the incremental late-season improvements, the team’s moribund defense is pushing Painter to his wit’s end.
In the previous six seasons, Purdue never finished ranked lower than 34th in defensive efficiency, according to historical data from Pomeroy. Across Painter’s tenure, the Boilermakers’ defense has an average ranking of 45th out of 358 teams.
“When he started, we were very defensive oriented, we were going to keep you under 60 points, grind it out, we were going to win a lot of games like that,” Kramer said.
What changed wasn’t Painter’s style of coaching, but the kinds of players he recruited. To keep up with the offensive revolution in basketball — both at the college level and beyond—he needed to bring in players capable of scoring at will. The problem was that not all of them are two-way players. “When you have those dynamic offensive lineups you definitely lose a little bit defensively,” Kramer said.
Only twice during the Painter era before this year had Purdue’s defense been lower than 100th. One of those dismal seasons was the 2012 campaign, when the team was upset as a 10 seed but lost in the Round of 32. The other was Painter’s first season with Purdue, when the team won nine games and missed the tournament.
When the current Boilermakers are humming on defense, the wins tend to follow: the team has a .720 winning percentage across the eight seasons when its defensive efficiency was ranked at least 25th. These strong defensive seasons haven’t always translated to success in the NCAA Tournament, where Purdue hasn’t reached a Final Four since 1980. Yet the Boilermakers have never survived the first weekend when their defense is ranked lower than 34th.
Penn State guard Jalen Pickett is defended by Purdue forward Mason Gillis and guard Jaden Ivey.
PHOTO: MATTHEW OHAREN/USA TODAY SPORTSIf this year’s team can buck that trend and win two or more games in the tournament, it would be historic for the program. It could also set a new precedent for futility in college basketball, where no team has made the Final Four in the last decade with a defense ranked worse than 70th in the nation.
The defensive standard for eventual champions during that span is even higher. All but two title-winning teams in the last decade finished the season ranked in the top 10 in defensive efficiency; none have been more inefficient than Baylor, which entered the 2021 tournament ranked 35th but finished 22nd, according to Pomeroy.
Before Painter’s team can start dreaming about New Orleans, however, it must get past No. 14 Yale on Friday. It’s the rare first-round tip that pits two equally matched defenses against each other: the Bulldogs are ranked just four spots behind Purdue in defensive efficiency at 103rd.
