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Matt Kiefer serves as managing partner at Luigs Kiefer Group in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He and his wife Kenzie, who hails from the Milwaukee area, have a daughter Caroline who is just over a year old and they live just north of the city in Whitefish Bay.
"We are having a good time getting to know Caroline even better since the day care facilities are closed," Kiefer said. "That is one of the good things and one of the challenges from COVID-19."
Prior to moving to Milwaukee, Kiefer lived in Chicago for about 10 years and that his where he met Kenzie. Before that, e played professionally in Europe for five years, (one year in Germany and four years in Spain).
In the Purdue playing days, Kiefer was a four-year regular from 2003-06, playing three years for coach Gene Keady and one year for Matt Painter. He was a chemical engineering major at Purdue, a rare feat among student-athletes.
The Evansville, Indiana native was a three-year starter and appeared in the NCAA Tournament as a freshman in 2003 and the NIT as a sophomore in 2004. The 6-foot-10 forward led the Boilermakers in scoring (12.0), rebounding (7.5) and blocked shots (30) as a senior in 2006.
GoldandBlack.com: What are some of your takeaways and memories from playing at Purdue?
Kiefer: The Purdue family is something that we talk about a lot at home. I'm still very connected with Coach Painter and had a conversation with him yesterday. The Purdue basketball family is powerful and it's something that a lot of other universities may not have.
With my teammates, you just have a shared bond, given what you went through. Obviously, it was a little bit challenging at Purdue at times from a career standpoint. On the basketball side, we had some injuries there towards the end of my career, which were very unfortunate. But it was nice to be able to go to the NCAA tournament my freshman year, and play with a lot of good players and good people.
GoldandBlack.com: What did the injuries to David Teague and Carl Landry and the difficulties of your senior year (2005-06) teach you?
Kiefer: What I will say to that is that group, and I think Coach Painter will even attest to this, we worked really hard. That may not have been reflected in the wins and losses, but we tried to set that tone that whenever you play Purdue, you're going to go against a team that comes at you for 40 minutes. That's really something that we tried to reestablish (in Painter's first season as head coach) so that future players could see that and try to model that in the future.
GoldandBlack.com: What teams and players challenged you the most?
Kiefer: IWe always had success playing Michigan State at home but then on the road It just seemed like it was a different mentality. That’s when they had a really solid group with guys like Paul Davis, Shannon Brown and Maurice Ager. So there was always a battle whenever it came to both of those teams playing against each other. You just walk into that arena, and while you're warming up, there's somebody in the crowd saying something personal to you. Like how do you know that about me? It’s a challenging atmosphere.
Illinois with Bruce Weber went to the Final Four when I was there (2005), but it was Michigan State for some reason I remember most.
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GoldandBlack.com: What were the differences and similarities in Gene Keady and Matt Painter?
Kiefer: With Coach Keady, you always knew where you stood. He was very transparent with things and he was very instantaneous to giving feedback so you could appreciate that. He did have more of a directive or transformational leadership style,
Coach Painter also had that in him at times. Coach Keady was an outstanding defensive coach, and an outstanding basketball mind. Coach Painter was such a student of the game. He was more of a situational leader, where he knew how to adjust his leadership style to the situation, whether it needs to be more directive in nature, whether you take a step back and be more empowering and let you think about how to accomplish a certain goal, so then you became self-responsible for it.
GoldandBlack.com: You graduated in chemical engineering from Purdue, a rare feat for an athlete at your level. But how did you get into commercial real estate?
Kiefer: Yeah, that's a good question. After playing overseas I had several conversations with John Nine, and I was considering going into industry and using my chemical engineering degree while moving towards a consulting opportunity. I initially decided to go down the consulting path, because I felt like it was a way that you were challenged on a daily basis.
After I decided to hang up basketball (in 2010) and move forward to the professional working world, I started some real estate investing in my hometown of Evansville. Over the last 10 years or so, we've grown the business to be pretty substantial. I was doing that on the side in parallel with consulting in the life science Pharma industry with large Pharma. Just recently I decided to move to real estate full time.
For more on John Nine's impact on Purdue hoops, click here.
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