Matt Painter seems tired of hearing about recruiting rankings.
It’s safe to assume he has been for a while but he made his thoughts known on a nearly monthly basis this season. The Purdue head coach has made it a point to remind those listening that this team is built from pieces that were undervalued by the ranking websites.
The reminders come through wins, usually when he’s asked about players like Grady Eifert or Carsen Edwards.
“Me and you and our grandmothers can sit down and say, 'These 20 guys are the best in the country,'” Painter said after beating Northwestern to clinch a share of the Big Ten championship. “But from like 21 to 300, it's a crapshoot.”
Edwards (ranked 118th in his class) and Eifert (walk-on) fit into that crapshoot category. Painter, over the past five years, has made it a point to recruit and cultivate talent from that secondary pool of players. Admittedly, those players might not always have the flashiest highlight tapes or mind-blowing athleticism but Painter says he’s looking for “solid” players.
This is not to say Purdue would have the success it has had without premier talents like Caleb Swanigan, Vince Edwards and others.
“That formula doesn’t work without Caleb Swanigan or Carsen Edwards or Isaac Haas or Vince Edwards,” Painter said. “You have to have guys in there that can carry the load, but it’s still a team game.”
The philosophy is hardly an original one. In fact, it was put to use for years during Gene Keady’s tenure at Purdue. It is, however, one that flies in the face of what this era’s top college basketball programs have done, which is to essentially rent talent.
The blueblood programs — Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, etc. — that Purdue fans are always striving to compare résumés with build around the top talent in high schools across the country, even with the knowledge that most of those prospects will leave for the NBA after just one year.
“You've got to get someone who’s going to stay put. … We’ve had a tough time getting guys that are so-called one-and-done or two-and-done guys,” Painter said. “But in a backhanded compliment, it sort of helps you because people aren’t running out the door after a year or two years.”
Painter’s model has honed in on ensuring players that he recruits will stay with the program for three to four years, helping both player and team grow. In Keady’s day, staying four years to graduate with a degree was the norm.
“We never really thought about that … we didn’t worry about guys being one and done because we didn’t have players that good, except Glenn Robinson,” Keady said. The Big Dog played two years at Purdue before being drafted as the No. 1 overall pick in the 1994 NBA draft.
There is the obvious advantage of having upperclassmen with experience under their belt to help lead a team during a late-season conference title run or the NCAA Tournament. Last year’s senior-laden team was proof of that.
To be clear, the talent cherry-picking strategy absolutely works in college basketball. But so does the one Painter has built at Purdue. And he’s not the only one.
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Another Keady disciple and former Purdue assistant, Bruce Weber, has found similar results in his seventh year as Kansas State. The Wildcats wrestled away the Big 12 title from Kansas under the leadership of seniors Kamau Stokes, Dean Wade and Barry Brown.
“If you can get experience and keep experience and stay old, it really helps in this day and age,” Weber said this past weekend, echoing Painter’s mantra. “We’ve got three seniors and juniors that have played a lot of games and that’s why we’ve been successful. None of them were really highly touted kids but we have a very good team. Matt’s got the same thing going at Purdue this year and even last year.”
Weber’s recruiting classes have been ranked between 60 and 100 nationally in national rankings, yet he’s challenged in the competitive Big 12 field, making the Big Dance three times in the five years, including a run to the Elite Eight last season.
“We did (the same thing) at Southern Illinois,” Weber said, referring to the time when Painter was his assistant before returning to his alma mater in 2004.
Keady, who graduated from Kansas State after playing football and basketball there, saw this template for success work for the first time when he was an assistant coach on Eddie Sutton’s Arkansas staff, helping lead the Razorbacks to the Final Four in 1984. He sees similarities between the two institutions that Painter and Weber are running.
“It’s a land grant college, the families cherish their degrees, they like following basketball, the state tournament in high school is a big deal,” Keady said, comparing Kansas State and Purdue and the respective states that allow them to thrive. “They know here and at K-State that you've got to go to class. You’re not here to go to the NBA. But if you do, it’s beautiful.”
There might be another reason, however, to buy stock in the model that Painter and Weber are constructing and executing than the flashy, obvious model used by the bluebloods: 2022.
That is the year, if talks between the NBPA and NBA continue as projected, when the age to enter the professional ranks will be lowered from 19 to 18. This would allow a large portion of high school seniors who have already shown NBA-level talent to bypass the NCAA and enter the draft.
If the best players in the country don’t need to spend a year at Duke, Kansas, Kentucky or the like, then there is a newfound urgency from the coaches that run those successful programs to find talent in that 21-300 range that Painter has been recruiting within all along.
It's important to remember that Painter isn't just looking for the most talented players from that pool, even though that is a factor.
"First of all, they have to want to get their education," he said about how he identifies player that fits the Purdue program. "They have to want to win as a team. ... It's really worked for us because we've had some really good guys for four years and so it keeps that corporate DNA."
There is a long way to go until 2022 but understanding the long-term benefits of building a program with resourceful pieces alongside top talent instead of the rent-a-player model might then continue to benefit Painter in the long run.
Atreya Verma is a reporter covering the Purdue men’s basketball and football teams. If you have thoughts, comments or concerns you can reach him at verma43@purdue.edu or on Twitter @atreya_verma.
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