ST. LOUIS (AP) — Matt Painter was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and he grew up in Muncie in the days when Bob Knight had the Hoosiers humming like a college basketball juggernaut. So, it makes sense that Painter would have rooted for the crimson-and-cream as a youngster.
“I know that’s sacrilegious now,” Painter said with a smile.
Well, Purdue fans have long forgiven him.
After spending four years playing point guard for Boilermakers legend Gene Keady, and eventually succeeding him as the head coach, Painter has turned Purdue into a juggernaut of its own. He has the black-and-gold headed back to the Sweet 16 after a 79-69 win over Miami in the NCAA Tournament on Sunday that also gave Painter his 500th win at the school.
“These guys — I know coaches talk about it — but they’ve put in so much in all areas to be the best they can be,” Painter said afterward. “That’s how you end up getting a lot of victories, because you have really good players that are committed.”
The Boilermakers will play No. 11 seed Texas on Thursday night in the West Region semifinals in San Jose, California.
“It’s awesome,” said Purdue guard Braden Smith, who has been part of 116 of Painter’s wins. “Coach Painter is the reason we’re here, because of who he is and how he conducts himself. Five-hundred wins is a huge accomplishment.”
Painter improved to 525-328 for his career, which includes a single season at Southern Illinois in which the Salukis when 25-5 and he was voted the Missouri Valley coach of the year. The Boilermakers quickly tapped him to be Keady’s successor, and after a transitional year spent as the associate head coach, Painter took over for good for the 2005-06 season.
The success wasn’t sudden — Purdue won just nine games his first year — but it did come quickly and consistently.
The Boilermakers made their first NCAA Tournament under Painter the following season, the first of six straight in which they won at least one game. Their current tournament streak is 11 in a row, which includes seven trips through the opening weekend, an Elite Eight appearance in 2019 and the Boilermakers’ first title game appearance since 1969 just two years ago.
They still have never won a national championship. But behind Smith, now the NCAA’s career assists king, and veterans like Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn, they have a good shot at cutting down the nets in a couple of weeks.
The Final Four, by the way, will be played in Indianapolis.
It all started for Painter in the early 1970s, with games shown on TV in the family home in northern Indiana.
“The first thing that I remember is Indiana winning the national championship when I was 6 years old,” Painter said of Knight’s 1976 team, the last unbeaten to win the title. “So then, like, you just kind of followed it ever since.”
Painter grew up on the Ball State campus, though, and he’d go to games there as a kid. He also remembers watching Jim Valvano run around the court after N.C. State beat Houston for the 1983 title, and he loved Georgetown in the days of Patrick Ewing.
“But I grew up watching the Big Ten,” Painter said, “and seeing, before cable hit — like, you’d have the three channels, then you would have that fourth one that was kind of fuzzy. That was the Big Ten channel, Channel 4. And so we would always watch the games.
“When I had a chance to play in the Big Ten,” he continued in a moment of reflection, “like, that was very, very surreal for me because I wasn’t somebody — I grew a lot in high school. I wasn’t that great of a player when I was younger.”
He’s become a heck of a coach.
Five times Painter has been voted the Big Ten’s best. He’s guided the Boilermakers to five regular-season conference championships, and a win over Michigan — a No. 1 seed in this NCAA Tournament — last weekend gave him three Big Ten tourney titles, too.
Painter needs just 12 more wins to match Keady for the most in school history.
He might be able to pick up a few of those before this trip through March Madness is over.
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
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