For the "we always get screwed by the NCAA committee" crowd, an interesting item to consider is, how many more Final Fours would Purdue have in its history if it simply had always beaten weaker-seeded teams, i.e. if we had just "taken care of business"?
The answer is we would have had 6 additional Final Fours, for a total of 8 (counting 1969 and 1980). And in 4 of those 6 additional Final Fours, we actually would've made it all the way to the National Title game, and we would've been an equal seed in 3 of those 4 national title games. So if we would've won even just 1/3 of those 3 equal-seeded title games, we'd also have a national title to our name. Pretty amazing IMO and really outlines our underachievement during that stretch--not only were we rarely upsetting anyone, but we were usually getting upset. Here's the breakdown--note I've only listed years we would've made the FF, but in a few other years we would've won a game or two more:
1988 - as a 1 we lost to a 4 (would've gone to final game and played #1 seed Oklahoma)
1990 - as a 2 we lost to a 10 (would've gone to final game and played #1 seed UNLV)
1994 - as a 1 we lost to a 2 (would've gone to final game and played #1 seed Arkansas)
1996 - as a 1 we lost to an 8 (would've gone to final game and played #1 seed Kentucky)
1998 - as a 2 we lost to a 3 (would've gone to final four and played #2 seed Kentucky)
2000 - as a 6 we lost to an 8 (would've gone to final four and played #1 seed Michigan State note that we did win one upset game in this tourney, over a 3)
Goes without saying that Keady under-achieved in the NCAAT, as we all know. He had a lot of great teams and therefore strong seeds--in fact Keady's average seed was an incredible 4.8. It's been somewhat different with Painter as his average seed has been lower (6.6), but other than the VCU game he's pretty much held serve as far as not losing to weaker seeds. Captain Obvious would say the next big jump for Painter is either get higher seeds, or upset some higher seeded teams...or both.
The answer is we would have had 6 additional Final Fours, for a total of 8 (counting 1969 and 1980). And in 4 of those 6 additional Final Fours, we actually would've made it all the way to the National Title game, and we would've been an equal seed in 3 of those 4 national title games. So if we would've won even just 1/3 of those 3 equal-seeded title games, we'd also have a national title to our name. Pretty amazing IMO and really outlines our underachievement during that stretch--not only were we rarely upsetting anyone, but we were usually getting upset. Here's the breakdown--note I've only listed years we would've made the FF, but in a few other years we would've won a game or two more:
1988 - as a 1 we lost to a 4 (would've gone to final game and played #1 seed Oklahoma)
1990 - as a 2 we lost to a 10 (would've gone to final game and played #1 seed UNLV)
1994 - as a 1 we lost to a 2 (would've gone to final game and played #1 seed Arkansas)
1996 - as a 1 we lost to an 8 (would've gone to final game and played #1 seed Kentucky)
1998 - as a 2 we lost to a 3 (would've gone to final four and played #2 seed Kentucky)
2000 - as a 6 we lost to an 8 (would've gone to final four and played #1 seed Michigan State note that we did win one upset game in this tourney, over a 3)
Goes without saying that Keady under-achieved in the NCAAT, as we all know. He had a lot of great teams and therefore strong seeds--in fact Keady's average seed was an incredible 4.8. It's been somewhat different with Painter as his average seed has been lower (6.6), but other than the VCU game he's pretty much held serve as far as not losing to weaker seeds. Captain Obvious would say the next big jump for Painter is either get higher seeds, or upset some higher seeded teams...or both.
