Matt Painter has guided Purdue to two of the past three Big Ten regular-season championships, made 10 straight NCAA Tournaments, including six of the past eight Sweet 16s, and, any way you slice it, generally elevated his program to top-tier status in the sport after recently producing a back-to-back Wooden Award winner (Zach Edey) and participating in the title game of the 2024 NCAA Tournament.
Is the best for Painter’s Boilermakers on tap?
It’s impossible to answer that question in August with any degree of certainty — but there are plenty of reasons to believe it’s possible, even with the bar set so high, mostly because each of the top four scorers from last season’s team that finished 15th at EvanMiya.com is back. One of them is All-American guard Braden Smith, the reigning Big Ten Player of the Year. Another one of them is All-American forward Trey Kaufman-Renn, the Boilermakers’ leading returning scorer. (Yes, Purdue has All-Americans in both the backcourt and frontcourt.) Combine that excellent core with fellow veterans Fletcher Loyer and C.J Cox, plus newcomers Oscar Cluff and Omer Mayer, and the Boilermaker should be considered the favorites in the Big Ten and among the realistic candidates to cut nets in Indianapolis on the first Monday night in April.
And wouldn’t that be something?
If things break a certain way, come next April, we could watch Painter, a 54-year-old future Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame coach from Indiana, lead his alma mater to a national championship inside a stadium located within a 70-minute drive of both where he attended high school and college. Also worth noting: three of Purdue’s starters — Smith, Loyer and Kaufman-Renn — are also Indiana natives, which could really make for a special scene inside Lucas Oil Stadium.
With college basketball’s player movement all but done this offseason, it’s time to start breaking down the rosters of the sport’s top programs. For…
..
