Minutes before Purdue’s dramatic 72-66 triumph over Tennessee in the Elite Eight on Sunday secured the school’s third trip to the Final Four, Painter reflected on the chat.
A year earlier, he had to do it at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, as Fairleigh Dickinson celebrated its victory as the NCAA tournament’s second 16-seed to defeat a 1-seed. Painters’ players looked at him with tears in their eyes, wondering how everything had come apart and if they’d ever be able to put it back together.
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“That speech stinks,” Painter stated. “We all have them. Only one coach is unable to use it Purdue.
Nonetheless, the Boilermakers never escaped the shadow cast by that disappointing setback. Instead, they battled it throughout the season, knowing they’d never convert the doubters into believers unless they made a deep run in the NCAA tournament.
They came at this moment after a triumph — one Purdue staffer described it as “cathartic” — and the best performance of senior center Zach Edey’s illustrious career.
Both Edey (40 points, 16 rebounds in 39 minutes) and Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht (37 points, 6-for-12 from 3-point range), the two front-runners for every major national player of the year award, put on a show Sunday. Edey and Knecht are the third pair of opponents.
ESPN Stats & Information predicts both players will have 35-point performances in the Elite Eight or later.
Purdue, which entered the game as the best 3-point shooting team in the country, went 3-for-15 from outside the arc and converted 21 of 33 free throw tries. Tennessee made 42% of its 3-pointers but only 39% of its overall field goal attempts.
“We knew that’s what the game was going to be,” he remarked. “Winning against a club like Tennessee isn’t always easy. The only thing that matters is that the job is completed successfully.
But it was Edey’s effort that turned the game in his team’s favor. With 34 seconds remaining, he blocked Knecht’s must-have bucket, effectively ending Tennessee’s chances of a comeback. According to ESPN Stats & Information, he is the only player to have 40 points and 15 rebounds in the NCAA tournament since 1990.
“He’s the best player in college basketball, one of the greats,” said Purdue’s Fletcher Loyer, who scored 14 points. “He deserves more appreciation because what he has accomplished is incredible. I am really proud of him and the effort he has done.”
Before the game, both Edey and Knecht stated that advancing to the Final Four was more important than predicting who would win the Wooden Award and other honors.
Even so, as the game tightened in the last minutes Sunday, as it had in the previous meeting between these two teams, a 71-67 win for Purdue at the Maui Invitational in November, both players appeared to be aware that they were in the midst of one of those moments that can create a legend.
“He’s a great player,” Edey stated. “There was never a battle between me and Dalton. It was a battle between Purdue and Tennessee. We were both relied on throughout the game. We both showed up. “We were able to win.”
As his team prepared for the rematch, Volunteers coach Rick Barnes and his players were quick to point out that past refereeing had made it impossible to control Edey. In the first game, Tennessee committed 30 fouls and Purdue attempted 48 free throws.
Early in the game Sunday, the Vols may have felt a sense of déjà vu, as they drew six fouls in the first seven minutes — largely as players attempted to put a body on Edey.
Tennessee had 18 fouls with eight minutes left in the game Sunday and finished with 25 overall.
Nonetheless, Tennessee managed to stay in the game. With 7:04 remaining, Knecht sank a three-pointer to tie the game at 56-56.
But Edey’s late efforts — a slam, important free throws, and a late block on Knecht — were the game-changing moments that shifted the battle in Purdue’s favor.
Purdue refused to leave the court following their victory.
The Boilermakers embraced one another, and each hug seemed to last longer than the last. Their family and friends collected confetti from the floor and displayed it to one another as if it were a handful of gold.
During the celebration, Edey pulled the security rope around the squad and walked to the stands, where he discovered a fan’s sign that read, “Happy Edey-Ster,” a play on “Happy Easter.” The 7-foot-4 celebrity requested a pen to autograph the sign.
When it was his turn to cut the net, he didn’t require a ladder. He then delivered a piece of the net to former Purdue coach Gene Keady, who won 512 games and coached Painter from 1989 to 1993.
“You’ve always got to pay respect to those that came first,” he remarked. “He built it. It does not go over our heads. He helped set everything up. It’s the least I can do to repay him and give him a small portion of the net.
Keady remains one of Painter’s mentors. And after Purdue fell to Fairleigh Dickinson last year, the new head coach contacted him.
“[I told him] keep your head up, keep working hard and he did that,” Keady went on to say. “He’s always been a good listener and I’m very proud of him.”
During Painter’s team’s 3½-hour journey from Columbus, Ohio, to West Lafayette, Indiana, after their first-round loss last season, he scrawled six pages of notes on the blunders that led to that moment.
He noted Sunday that it’s an aspect of the game that few people witness.
But Painter has made his first Final Four appearance, and everything from last season is a distant memory.
His club might be the only one left with a chance to beat UConn. However, he was not in a hurry to ponder about the upcoming Sunday.
That’s why he raised his hand and glanced around Little Caesars Arena for a few additional seconds after the game, knowing his team’s next flight will be to Glendale, Arizona, for the Final Four.
“You feel a lot of different people coming at you,” Painter described the program’s last year. “And you must have strong convictions. I believe we had strong convictions about how we played and did things. I am just thrilled for our squad.”
