One of the winningest branches of the Purdue basketball coaching tree is doing it in a very un-Purdue-like way.

Former Boilermaker guard Linc Darner's Florida Southern College program plays tonight in the Division II Elite Eight in Evansville, two games short of the national title game.

The 33-1 Moccasins have reached this point with an up-tempo offensive style aimed at maximizing possessions and shooting threes in bulk. It's worked this season to the tune of an average of 89 points per game and a dozen games of scoring 90 or more.

At the other end of the floor, it's frenzied defense based around full-court pressing and trapping, concepts starkly different from the Purdue style of Darner's college coach, Gene Keady.

FSC has forced an average of nearly 19 turnovers this season.

Darner's style has worked, big-time.

With his ninth season in Lakeland winding down, Darner's now 215-72 at the school - 207-52 after an 8-20 debut season with an inherited team - and the winner of six Sunshine State Conference regular season titles and six league tournament titles.

If FSC gets past Southern New Hampshire tonight at the Ford Center in Evansville, he'll stand just two games shy of adding a national title.

"It'd be unbelievable if we could finish the year with a national championship," Darner said. "It's been what we've worked for since the beginning of the year, when I think I pissed my team off a little bit when I made the comment that there wasn't any way with our non-league schedule that we could go undefeated. We played a brutal non-league school; five of the 12 teams were nationally ranked, including No. 2 on the road and No. 3. I said that in the paper and I think it motivated our guys to want to prove me wrong.

"We've had one blunder on our schedule so far. We have a chance to finish the year with that being our only one and go 36-1. We won our regular season, won our conference tournament and won the regional. We're the only team of the eight down here to win all three. If we can finish it off with a national title, it would be an unbelievable reward for all the work these guys put in to get here."

GoldandBlack.com caught up with Darner, a 1995 Purdue graduate and the former coach at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, for this Q&A.

"It's been a great run for us. We got here two years ago. Last year we got upset in the first round and that was a lot of motivation for the core guys we returned to get back here and win it all. We've played extremely well this year and hopefully we can continue it for three more games."

Darner: "We just stick with what we do, the style I like to play, and don't veer too much from it.

"It's a different style than a lot of people play and we've stuck with it. It's something I've done ever since I've been a head coach, even when we might not have had the (right) talent when I've taken over jobs, at St. Joe's and then Florida Southern. Maybe we didn't have the talent to do it, but we put the blueprint in and just stuck with it. We recruit guys we feel can fit our style. We're not big and we're not huge, but we're quick, we're athletic and we've got some guys who can really shoot the basketball."

Darner: "I always liked the fast-paced game and I worked for a guy at Ashland named Roger Lyons that played it and really introduced me to it. I just picked it up and I remember the '90s watching Arkansas play and the pressing and trapping they did and I liked that. I always thought it could be a big recruiting tool for us, because in Division II you only get 10 scholarships and we'll play nine or 10 guys. When we recruit, we tell guys, 'If you come here, you're going to play.'"

Darner: "Depends if they make the shots."

Darner: "My philosophy is, if you're open and it's a good shot for you, shoot it. I think it can give guys confidence, knowing we want them to shoot when they're open. People think then, 'Well, you most not play defense then,' but we play very good defense. We do give up some easy baskets because we press, but there's a misconception: We don't just come down and fire it at the basket. We work on getting good shots. It's just that it might be after one pass or maybe after six or seven passes.

"We emphasize good shots to our guys, but we want them to feel confident. I have an All-American (Kevin Capers) on my team who's going to take some bad shots, but he's also going to make a lot of bad shots. We give him maybe a little more freedom than we might some other guys. But just because we play a fast style, people think we must not guard, but that's not the case. We guarded extremely well this year and our biggest statistical category at the end of the day is how many turnovers (opponents) had and how many turnovers we had.

"The way we play, we get about 85-95 possessions per game and turn it over about 12 times, which is really an amazing statistic when you think about it. We really emphasize taking care of the ball and we force between 18-22 turnovers per game. It's about how many more shots we can get up than the opponent can get up."

Darner: "I think I've taken stuff from everybody I've worked for and everybody I played for. With my dad, I grew up around basketball and we do a lot of his stuff. Coach Keady, we do a lot of his same drills as well as my dad's, a lot of Coach Keady's shutout drills and toughness drills and things we did at Purdue when I was there. Working with Roger Lyons, I took a lot from him.

"And then I just watch a lot of basketball and have just taken from what a lot of other people do: 'Hey, I like that idea,' or, 'Maybe we can try that.'

"But it's mainly those three coaches and I've followed Coach (Bruce) Weber and other (Purdue) coaches closely. I think if you watched our team play, you'd see a lot of Purdue. I think you'd think our team is very tough and we play extremely hard. You could always say that about us at Purdue."

Darner: "We do a little bit of everything. We take high school kids, go the junior college route and take Division I and Division II transfers. It's a mixture. Recruiting in Division II, you have to recruit so many guys, because every kid you're recruiting from high school is hoping he gets a Division I offer and it's very hard, because we might be the only one recruiting a kid for the longest time and he'll end up signing with a high-major Division I after getting recruited for a month, when nobody knew about him before, because of the power of Dick Vitale and Twitter.

"We have to turn over every rock. Everyone who calls you, you have to look into. You rely on your contacts. We've been very successful recruiting Indiana, just from me being from Indiana and how well they've played for us. It can be brutal. We have a big recruiting class for next year and sometimes people panic because we don't sign kids early very often, because you want to wait to see who's out there in March and April, because that's when the transfers start and things like that. And our biggest thing is finding guys to recruit who fit our style."

Darner: "I love Lakeland and Florida Southern's a great place, but like anybody else you'd like to get an opportunity at the highest level, the Division I level. If it comes around, great. If it doesn't, I've got a great place to work and I work for a great administration that gives us the things we need to compete at the highest level. If it happens, it happens, and if it doesn't, it's not that big a deal to me. I enjoy what I'm doing and where I am."

GoldandBlack.com Mobile for your AndroidClick GoldandBlack.com Mobile for your iPhoneClick Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited. E-mail GoldandBlack.com/Boilers, Inc.Here to view this Link. | Here to view this Link.

Click Click Here to view this Link. Here to view this Link.