Skip to main content
purdue logo

Express Thoughts: Portal complications and more

On3 imageby:Brian Neubert•03/25/25•

brianneubert

Purdue coach Matt Painter
Purdue coach Matt Painter (Gregory Fisher/Imagn Images)

Gold and Black Express Thoughts from the Weekend column, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind.

ON PURDUE’S NCAA TOURNAMENT OUTLOOK

I know Purdue’s program at this point takes a backseat to very few like it and should be considered an underdog story basically never, but the term “house money” does come to mind as the Boilermakers prepare to meet No. 1 seed Houston at Lucas Oil Stadium right around the time “The Tonight Show” comes on Friday night.

For years, I’ve felt like of every great team out there, the one Purdue should want no part of is Houston, because Kelvin Sampson, in my opinion, might be the best coach in college basketball and turns out the same team with same demeanor every single year. The way they guard, they way they bring guns to knife fights, it’s a different level from any of the elite teams Purdue’s run through the past several years.

That they lead college basketball in three-point shooting this particular season too is another layer of oof.

Make no mistake here, folks: Purdue is a considerable underdog this weekend. It may not ever view itself that way, but it is. When was the last time KenPom only gave Purdue a one-in-four chance to win?

But whatever happens Friday, Providence did serve as Purdue tying this season off as success, with a sixth trip to the Sweet 16 season out of eight chances. That’s really something, and this is one of the remaining programs out there where you build up to things. Barring anything I’d call a surprise, the core of this team should remain intact next season, a foundation perhaps for another silver-bullet sort of season next year. Success now echoes into November and those months that follow.

Purdue’s already hit a marker by making the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, an accomplishment that shouldn’t be dragged just because it only had to beat two low-major buy-game programs to do it.

First off, that’s why they seed the tournament, to give favor to those who earned it. Second, blame Clemson for losing to McNeese (or TCU to Utah State last year). Third, view teams for what they are, not the number next to their names. High Point and McNeese State both came into this event having unleashed hell on their conferences, conditioning themselves exclusively to win. Those are dangerous teams this year of year, as Purdue well knows.

Would you rather play boring, unremarkable Clemson, with its record bloated by a bad ACC, or the energized, swaggy, irrationally confident bunch of second-chancers who fear nothing? That’s what this time of year is all about, the fact that anything can happen and very little is as it appears on paper.

Purdue will hope to be on the right side of such a surprise Friday night.

ON THE REALITIES OF THIS TIME OF YEAR

Purdue’s been pretty immune to the realities of college basketball right now during this particular moment in the calendar, but now here it is. It is a good problem, because playing on the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament is better than the alternative, but a problem nonethless.

By advancing in the tournament, Purdue all throughout its locker room can’t 100-percent commit to the game of Musical Chairs to come.

Purdue needs to add players from the transfer wire this spring, but its coaches need to be fully invested in trying to beat Houston right now. Little else matters all that much when you’re among the last teams standing. Winning right now is kind of the whole point of all else.

Conversely, there are players in Purdue’s locker room who are going to have decisions to make as soon as the season ends. They are now at risk of being some of the later marbles on the Hungry, Hungry Hippos board.

But this is how it had to be. The calendar before made no sense. I was at a high-end April evaluation event a few years ago that normally would be packed with coaches, but the Pacers Athletic Center in Westfield was sparsely attended, because coaches couldn’t leave their campuses because transfers were visiting. (Purdue did get affected by that one weekend, also.)

“You’ve just got to be on the phone, you got to do your job, you gotta keep your focus,” Painter said. “(The game) is the most important stuff. You work like hell to be in this position and now here you are, you want to play well in the Sweet 16.”

Further, those Purdue players who might leave might need to be replaced. If you need to replace a player at X position, you’d prefer not to be the last set of feet through the door at the X store.

So preparing for all contingencies right now is going to make for a fair amount of wasted time at a moment where time is a precious commodity.

This is the same problem that exists with the College Football Playoff.

Good problems to have, but problems nonetheless.

ON COACHING BEHAVIOR

If you treat coaches like kings, they are going to act like them. That reality was again brought to mind by UConn coach Dan Hurley’s behavior after losing to Florida, but more so by his thug comms sycophant’s response, as he reportedly tried to bully a reporter into removing video of Hurley’s latest spell of childish behavior. Hurley is the king in this tale and this communications person his executioner. He even lied about the reporter being somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. It’s gross. (The comms staffer deleting a tweet making light of the issue serves as confirmation, in my mind, the story is as it seems.)

But this is a reminder again that coaches may be brilliant people in their field, as Hurley obviously is, but they’re just as full of hot air as the rest of us as humans, and when people kiss their feet, what do you think is going to happen?

Here’s how the NCAA Tournament’s media partners covered it a few weeks after CBS got Hurley to do “60 Minutes.”

Adorable.

You may also like