Thanks, Andy. I'm not saying I know more about basketball than Painter. I'm also not treating Painter as some infallible rocket scientist God like you are. He's human, and he's no genius. He's been wrong plenty, and he'll be the first to admit that.
Painter's teams have lost in back to back to back years to a 13 seed, 15 seed, and a 16 seed. It seems you may have forgotten this fact. This is unparalleled in the history of college basketball.
"Upside," may have never won a game, but awareness of a player's upside, and allowing for that upside to be realized, absolutely has won plenty of games. That's how teams get better over the course of a season.
That's why nobody wants to play the teams with top-talent come March, because they know that talent is there and they can see its potential to be honed more effectively with more experience and minutes.
It's also partially why Purdue has been able to seemingly dominate pre-season tournaments against big name teams like Duke, Gonzaga, UNC, Villanova, Tennessee, Marquette, etc. only to plateau and lose to the likes of North Texas, St. Peter's, and FDU.
Plenty of games have been lost by sticking to what's familiar and the status-quo.
The NCAA tournament is an entirely different animal than B1G conference play, and it requires a bit of a deviation from what is familiar.