Matt Painter, one of the most forthright coaches in college basketball, said the quiet part out loud. After his fourth-seeded Boilermakers lost to No. 5 Ohio State, 87-78, in overtime of their Big Ten tournament quarterfinal game Friday, I asked him if there’s a positive to be derived from being eliminated from the conference tournament early.
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After all, the Boilers were upset in the 2019 Big Ten tournament quarters by No. 7 Minnesota and were so crestfallen, so defeated, that they turned around a week later and began an NCAA run that brought them within a whisper of the Final Four.
He started nodding about halfway through the question.
“It’s obviously not what you want; you want to win this game,” Painter said. “But you get more rest and you get an edge, and that’s probably more important to us. When you win five straight (as Purdue did before Friday’s loss), sometimes there’s slippage. Not just sometimes; there’s slippage. You’re winning games, but you’re still making mistakes, so there’s a definite advantage to (an early exit).
“I think any coach would say they want to win the game as a competitor, but after it’s over with, you do take the positive side of it. If you take somebody like Jim Boeheim or Mike Krzyzewski or Tom Izzo, the guys who’ve been around for 30 to 40 years, they have so much data, they’ll tell you, you have your positives and your negatives to advancing deep into the (conference) tournament. Anyway, you’re stuck, so you might as well take the silver lining and make the best of it.”
Let’s be honest about this: College basketball coaches, in general, couldn’t care less about postseason league tournaments. Unless you’re on the bubble and need to win a few games to reach the NCAA Tournament, this is a mostly empty exercise designed to make money for TV and the conferences, and little else. There’s nothing wrong with that, but these coaches are measured by their NCAA Tournament success, with little or no attention paid to conference tournament titles.
Don’t misunderstand: It’s great theater and endlessly entertaining, especially when you have Michigan’s Juwan Howard and Maryland’s Mark Turgeon threatening to wring each other’s necks, but the games are largely meaningless to teams with an eye on the real tournament — like Ohio State, like Purdue, like almost everybody in the Big Ten besides IU.
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At this point, wouldn’t you just as soon use the next week to relax and prepare for your NCAA Tournament opponent-to-be-named Sunday? Yeah, the tournament championship trophy is a nice little bauble and means something — more to some programs than to others — but is it really worth the additional effort and strain when you have to turn around and prepare for the tournament that matters most?
At this point, we truly have to ask why this year’s league tournaments are even being played, all the while fully knowing the answer is $$$$$. Just a few days into the proceedings, we’ve already seen Virginia, Duke, Kansas and North Carolina A&T sent home because of COVID-19. It might feel like we’ve hit the final few meters of this pandemic marathon, but we’re still a country with just 10 percent of the population vaccinated. The minute we talk about COVID-19 in the past tense, it re-announces itself in the present.
If I’m Purdue, or any other program guaranteed a spot in the NCAA Tournament, I’m not sure I’m all that heartbroken to go home and get away from this atmosphere. There is danger lurking around every corner; who wants to risk a positive COVID-19 test and the possibility of missing the tournament?
Look … I’m not being a Pollyanna here. Winning is certainly better than losing at any point in the season under any circumstances, but, you know, dropping out of the Big Ten tournament on a Friday isn’t without a silver lining.
Ultimately, Purdue is in fine shape heading into next week, even if its season-ending five-game winning streak ended against Ohio State. The Boilermakers still won 11 of their past 15 games. They still have two dominant big men in Trevion Williams and Zach Edey; Williams, who has slumped recently, was a monster in the second half, making 10-of-14 shots after a 2-of-7 first half, willing his team back into the game. They still have an electric freshman named Jaden Ivey. They still have a team that has every chance of reaching the second week of the tournament, or even beyond.
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“This is a lesson learned,” Williams said. “I think a lot of guys, a lot of teams in our situation, would hang their heads. I’m trying to do my best to keep motivated, keep guys ready for the (NCAA) tournament. After this tournament, it means more.”
This is a uniquely tough-minded group, and the Boilermakers showed that again Friday, fighting back from an 18-point first-half deficit during which they surrendered an obscene 49 points. Purdue, which has always been known for its defense, had allowed an average of just 60 points per game during the five-game winning streak. But Ohio State, led by Kyle Young, throttled the Boilers, making 8-of-17 first-half 3s.
Come overtime, the Boilers seemed to run out of gas, and at one point, Painter actually put Williams on the bench after two poor boxouts, concerned that his best player was fatigued and heavy-legged.
But never mind all of that. It meant nothing. If anything, it showed that Purdue is ready to put on a show in the coming weeks. This was important only in the sense that it gave Purdue’s freshmen a chance to see what the postseason looks and feels like. Now they know. And they’ll be ready.
When it counts, the Boilers will be there, and they will make life very uncomfortable for their opponents. Ivey had a shaky start but came to life. Same with Mason Gillis, another freshman who struggled then collected two massive offensive boards late in the game. And Edey has been playing as well as any big man in the country in recent weeks.
Now the Boilermakers go back to West Lafayette, at least for a short while, and take stock of who they are and where they intend to go. Sometimes a loss isn’t a loss, not really. When it matters next week and the weeks beyond, Purdue will be a contender, and Friday’s overtime loss, which revealed a lot of good things about this basketball team, will be long forgotten.
(Photo of Trevion Williams: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)