"Your house is on fire," a voice rips through a mostly abandoned Mackey Arena. There's no fans, just the handful of managers, the assistant coaches, and a team of quiet Boilermakers. Painter's voice is loud in comparison. It's urgent. It's also a little comical because Matt Painter is orchestrating at his finest, teaching with volume, vocalizing for a team that's struggled to find its own voice as it transitions away from a team of confident, self-assured seniors to a team of hard-working, nose to the ground freshmen and sophomores.



"We want to save all the animals," Painter continues, and there's still volume to his voice, but also a smirk as he makes his way towards the sideline as his player's start to position themselves for another run at a defensive drill. "We want to save all the animals," he insists again, and then, because Matt Painter is truly a gift to this profession, he starts naming off animals.

"The rabbits," he starts with, then moved on to other home and barnyard animals. He's entertaining himself, certainly, but he's also trying to break through. He needs his time to feel the emergency.



Painter is one of the more thoughtful coaches in all of sports. He does not get stumped by hard questions or shy away from them. He does not casually interact with his team despite a social presence that is casual and conversational. He does not get angry to get angry.



He understands the value of expletives. He doesn't use them one on one, but in practices, when he needs to get his whole team's attention, he'll stop the action and they'll start to fly.

During this drill early in Purdue's day before Northern Kentucky practice, Painter moves quick into the paint, under the basket and looks around to his team, half separated from their screwed up defensive drill.

"We keep doing this," Painter exclaims. "Stop the [expletive] ball."

The barnyard animals didn't get his point across.

Painter does not want to watch the college sports world burn, after all, he'd be standing in the ashes as one of the best coaches in the sport. Still, he finds himself standing in the middle of a circus he can't quite make sense of.

When Painter was asked about the difficulties of deciding whether to apply a redshirt to true freshman big man, Raleigh Burgess, the conversation eventually led to if it'd be easier if the same redshirt rules applied to basketball as it does football.

Painter said yes it would, but instead of Burgess being able to get some minutes on the court before deciding, Painter and Burgess had to deciede to forego the redshirt and keep the Ohio native as an open for Painter even though he'd admitted that they probably won't need Burgess every game.

The implication is quite clear that redshirting is just one of a thousand things that Painter doesn't understand about the NCAA and its decision-making process.

"Guys, like," Painter said Thursday, preparing to once again be a voice of good and reason in a college sports world that tends to lack in both. "If you want to have another talk about the NCAA and the decisions that have been made across the board with everything from the portal to Name, Image, and Likeness to eligibility to recruiting to - you know, their area of compliance befuddles me. How we have people who just absolutely, openly not doing what they're supposed to do and why we can't hold these people accountable. Why we glorify them because they win basketball games. It blows my mind, so."

So, the season goes on with NCAA waters as murky as ever.

Matt Painter has a roster of connundrums past his top three players. That's the difficult part of collecting so much talent. Players that are good enough won't have enough minutes to play as much as they should or he'd want.


Painter's addressed this issue throughout the summer and through Purdue's two exhibition games and season opener. The conversations he has with media are similar to the ones he shared with us on Thursday, but he indulved even more in what is and will be separating his roster going forward.

"Really, you have conversationsa bout them on their production," Painter said when asked about how he addresses minutes with his players.



Matt Painter doesn't have a talent problem at Purdue or character concerns. At the moment, what Painter needs, is guys who can find the energy to make the team better.

"We have some guys that are really good dudes, man, and they play hard," Painter said. "But their energy is so low they dont' help anybody else. They're just like 'I'm kind of in my own world. I'm just kind of here. I'm just kind of quiet.'"

"And I'm just gonna kinda not play you," Painter emphasized.

What Painter needs from his team now is for his introverted, high character guys, to channel the hard work and push it outward.

"Bring energy," Painter continued. "When you bring energy and you go out there and you compete your ass off, and you know what you're doing and you bring value to our team, Man, I can't get enough of you. Cause that leads to winning, and that's what it comes down to."



This message has not been one given to just media.



"I told our team yesterday," Painter said. "I don't play Fletcher Loyer more than the other guys because I like him more than you guys. I play him because he's more productive than you guys. He's more intelligent than you guys. He actually speaks. He actually talks. He actually takes what the caoches give him and takes it to our team. Not to say other people don't do that on our team, but we have some guys that just stay in their little lane and stay in their little world, and you can't do that."




Painter continued about what he wanted from his guys, "Hey man, this is my passion and this is my time and this is what I put it in and damnit it matters. And I'm not gonna sit here and play ten minutes when I'm more talented than somebody else. It doesn't have to do with you being more talented, it's about you being more productive. You're more talented to me but I get more shit done than you, you've got to play me. It's not a talent world. It's a production world."

For all the talk about recruiting and talent, college basketball and sports in general can get a little too caught up in bringing talent into a program.



There's not been many coaches better at that in the Big Ten than Matt Painter.

But what Painter has always really excelled out, is getting the most production out of that talent. For this team, Painter first has to find his team's voices.