Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw
Purdue’s basketball season ended with a West Regional Final loss to top-seeded Arizona Saturday night.
As I watched the final seconds fade from the clock, I fully understood the ramifications of what was happening.
I was watching the end of an era, not just in Purdue Basketball, but in college basketball in general.
Here were college seniors — players who had been at the same school for four years—trudging off the court for the final time as representatives of their school and their program.
Bradon Smith, Fletcher Loyer, and Trey Kaufman-Renn had just accomplished something that we aren’t likely to see much of ever again. They had completed four years of college basketball at the same school.
And they were not just the guys who sit at the end of the bench, either. These guys were integral parts of Purdue teams that had experienced both playing in the National Championship game and losing in the first round as a number-1 seed.
We can learn a lot from these three guys.
Today I would like to examine some of those things.
- Experience matters.
Playing under the same coach in the same system for four years means they knew what was coming more times than not. They knew what Coach Matt Painter was thinking as he was thinking it. They knew what the other was thinking. They knew what their other teammates were thinking.
How? Because they had been through it before, and they had been through it together.
And they clearly pay attention. Not everyone does that.
There certainly are more talented teams than the Boilermakers in the field of 68 teams, but there are none that have the depth of knowledge that they have.
They knew how to use that knowledge to their benefit, and they did it well.
- Coaching matters.
Matt Painter has become one of the most respected coaches in America because each and every season, he puts a team on the floor that competes with anyone they run into.
And let’s be 100-percent ‘real’ about it—he’s recruiting kids to come to West Lafayette, Indiana. Not the beaches of Florida, not the southern Atlantic coastline…Northern Indiana. There is nothing sexy or cool to a 17-or 18-year-old kid about West Lafayette. It’s cold there in the winter, in case you didn’t know. It’s also not a hub of high society.
Painter knows that. Remember, he was once recruited to Purdue, and he accepted that invitation.
So, he’s not wasting his time standing in long lines for five-star recruits who will play there a year and move on.
No, he’s looking for the best of the rest. He’s willing to take guys who are less talented but willing to do what it takes to get better and to do whatever the team needs to do to win.
He’s also getting the best of Indiana, too.
One Indiana Mr. Basketball will graduate in Smith, and he’s getting the presumptive 2026 Mr. Basketball in Mt. Vernon’s Luke Ertel. Ertel scored 26 in leading Mt. Vernon to the 4A state championship on Saturday night.
- Good stories don’t have to have happy endings.
Everyone associated with Purdue basketball, including their fans, is disappointed that they aren’t still playing this weekend. Of course they are!
But no one should think that this season was a failure because they didn’t win Saturday night.
They started the year as number-1 in the polls, tripped and fell down a few times in February, and was staring at being a 5 or 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament heading to Chicago for the Big 10 Tournament.
They won three straight games and that tournament title and looked like they had locked back into being who we all thought they were.
They ended up a 2-seed, and the team that knocked them out was the top seed in the West Region.
And they led Arizona for about 30 minutes of the game before the inside presence of the Wildcats was joined by a series of 3-pointers in key moments.
Arizona is a better team, and they deserved to win. Purdue played well, they fought valiantly, and they proved to be worthy of being in the Elite 8.
In the end, that’s all anyone can ask for.
It was a noble ending for a group of guys who have given the university and the program a lot.
- It’s never wrong to do the right thing.
These guys we’re talking about are not likely to be NBA stars. It’s much more likely that they will spend a lot more time and make a lot more money in their adult lives doing something other than playing basketball. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!
By staying in school for four years, these guys don’t have to worry about playing catch up or having to circle back to finish their class work and get their degrees. That allows them to go to Las Vegas for the NBA Summer Camp or to sign in Europe without worrying about what happens if that plan doesn’t work out.
In other words, they have options. And when you have options, your life has a better chance of turning out well.
