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HARTFORD, Conn. — Purdue opens play at the NCAA Tournament Thursday, with a No. 3-seeded team coming off winning a share of the Big Ten regular season championship.

It's won big in what was very reasonably considered a rebuilding year for a Boilermaker program coming off a program-best 30 wins last season, and losing four important seniors from that team.

It seems as good a time as any to examine one of the reasons it is, one of the foundations of Purdue's success: Matt Painter's approach to recruiting, an approach that may not stack star-studded classes one of top of the other, but has helped Purdue win 67 percent of the time under Painter, with three Big Ten regular season titles and now 10 NCAA Tournament appearances.

The following report is based off an extended interview with Painter back in November and numerous other corroborative sources over the span of years.

Years ago, when Isaac Haas decided just before the signing date to withdraw his commitment to Wake Forest, a family member text-messaged Matt Painter to ask: If it was your son, what would you do?

I said, ‘Well if it was my son and he committed, and we had made a thorough decision, I would’ve told him to stay with his commitment,’" Painter recalls saying, a story recounted by Haas during his Purdue years. "They haven’t played any games from September to November."

The next day, Haas' stepfather called to confirm that Purdue was not interested in a player who'd officially visited West Lafayette prior to committing to Wake.

"I didn't say that," Painter said.

The family assured Purdue's coach that the Wake Forest "ship had sailed," and quickly worked to arrange for Painter to come to Alabama to visit the center, who wound up with the Boilermakers, a key piece of the program's success the past four seasons prior to this one.

But that initial text, that first exchange with a newly available-again recruit's family, that could have gone a long way the other way. In this case, it probably scored Painter some trust points, some cachet for honesty; under a different set of circumstances, it could easily have ended things.

Painter, in recruiting and all other areas to which it applies, is known for his forthrightness. It comes through in his handling of players and staff, his dealings with media, and recruits and the people around them alike.

But that commitment to honesty can fly in the face of the mission in recruiting, which is by nature a superficial business.

While Painter may not be the only coach in college basketball who shoots straight with recruits — a trait countless recruits and their coaches over the years have noted — some would say he doesn't make things any easier on himself from a sales perspective.

He'd tell you, in a roundabout way, that's just how he likes it. It's by design.

Painter's a big "culture" guy when it comes to program-building, one who puts a good deal of emphasis on substance, however you want to define it, and while recruiting a player, he's vetting substance.

He's also building his program's culture on the front end.

“Sometimes you don’t want to talk about something in recruiting because maybe it’s awkward, whatever it might be," Painter said. "Then in hindsight, I might think, ‘Why didn’t I just shoot them between the eyes? Why didn’t I just be honest, but also diplomatic?’ You don’t have to be harsh, and sometimes when people are honest, they’re a little bit too harsh and I do get that way. I get abrupt at times. So I’ve learned to just be as diplomatic as I can, but be an open book and just be honest and I think people can really appreciate that – now maybe you’re going to lose somebody in recruiting because of that, and if that happens I’m comfortable with it. I’m comfortable with losing that player, because deep down, it’s really not that important. If your honesty is going to turn somebody off, it’s really not that important. It just isn’t. Things are going to work for you if you try your best and you’re honest with people and I think even when we’ve lost guys I think that’s helped us grow a reputation here that our program is going to do things by the books, and with that being said I don’t think we deserve a medal, or an honor, or an award for that. You shouldn’t get rewarded for doing what you’re supposed to."

A lot of coaches tell players in recruiting that they won't be promised this or that when they enroll. Painter makes it especially clear, his philosophy being that he doesn't want there to ever be land mines laying in the sand when a player arrives, no surprises, and he certainly doesn't want any promises made that can't or won't be fulfilled, for one reason or another.

(One of the players he's signed at Purdue to which he made clear promises was Caleb Swanigan, and by every account those promises — largely relating to positional usage — were met.)

"It’s so much easier to get out in front of things," Painter said. "I think every time I stay silent about anything that goes on in your basketball program, whether it’s something with your players, something with recruiting, and you don’t get out in front of it and talk about it, it’s going to come up at some point, where a guy is maybe not playing as hard as he should and you don’t say something to him, something happens in recruiting, something goes on, maybe on a visit, and you don’t talk about it. I think we all just kind of hope our problems go away.

"We just all do – can somebody please come solve my problems for me without me talking about it or doing anything about it? I think we all have a little bit of that in us and so whenever I reflect on something that happened, whether it’s recruiting or anything basketball-wise, I always feel like if I would have just gotten out in front of it and just been direct, it would have been different."

Again, Painter is not the only straight-shooter in recruiting in college basketball, but he does have his own sort of "code" in recruiting that does seem to set him apart, one built on honesty, but also accountability and respect for the process, as you might call it.

Here are two examples of the latter: Glenn Robinson III and Bryant McIntosh.

In the Class of 2012, Robinson — the son of the former Purdue star of the same name — came along. Purdue recruited him, but did not offer him during or after his sophomore year. Around that time, only Valparaiso had.

That summer, though, Michigan took a liking to Robinson, extended to him his first high-major offer, and Robinson committed. After he committed, Robinson "blew up," as they say, moved into the upper crust of the rankings nationally and ultimately went on to enjoy a meaningful NBA career. He starred at Michigan while Purdue endured its two-year downturn. The optics for Purdue on that one were not good.

Purdue had advantages with Robinson. But after he'd committed to the Wolverines, even after he'd emerged as a high-level recruit, the Boilermaker coaching staff kept its distance.

"We had a chance to recruit him, and I made a mistake," Painter says now. "I should have offered him and I didn’t and that was on me and nobody else and John (Beilein) and his staff did a good job seeing that he was a good player. I didn’t.

"And so six months later you see him playing and you are like, ‘Oh man, he’s really good and that was my mistake and they deserve to get him because they did a better job than us.’”

As for McIntosh, some background: Painter and Indiana State coach Greg Lansing are friends, have been for years.

So when McIntosh and his Greensburg High School team came to Purdue's team camp in June before his senior year, when it was an open secret that the point guard would soon be withdrawing his longtime commitment to Indiana State, Painter made an unusual move.

He barred his coaches from watching McIntosh play that day, not out of disrespect to the player, but out of respect to Indiana State.

"I have been on that end of it," Painter said. "I have had kids who knew they were going to commit and I have had other programs calling and messing with it and poking at the fire, so I told our staff, ‘Hey, nobody goes to see him. He comes here, you can go say hello to the coach but nobody goes into their gym, I don’t care who they are playing, we aren’t going to see him, that’s not fair to Greg and it’s not fair to Indiana State and we aren’t doing that.'"

McIntosh did decommit soon thereafter, then drew literally dozens of high-major offers the next month, Purdue among them.

Purdue did recruit McIntosh once he re-opened, and the very day Painter made a visit in the afternoon, McIntosh committed to Northwestern that night.

There's no real reason to suggest that things would have turned out differently there had Purdue stacked its coaches one top of the other courtside at McIntosh's games in June, but that it didn't is another reflection of the sort of uncommon code Painter holds himself to in recruiting.

"I wouldn't call it a code," Painter said. "I think it's just who I am."

Coaches who've worked for Painter, known Painter or simply seen Painter out and about have often been struck by how much recruiting he does in-season.

This year, for example, the Boilermaker head coach traveled to see most of his program's top Class of 2020 targets personally. His travel included trips out east to see center Hunter Dickinson of Maryland and guard Ethan Morton of Pennsylvania and forward Ben Carlson and guard Kerwin Walton of the Minneapolis area. In Indiana, he's seen guards Jaden Ivey and Trey Galloway live this season, as well, at least once each.

That's just during the season.

While TV has spread Big Ten games out further and further throughout the average week, windows for travel are less consistent than they used to be. But perhaps, perhaps as much, if not more, than any head coach at this level in the country, finds them, and because of it, puts himself in position to make the recruiting pitch, "We've watched you more than anyone, and that should matter."

“I want to see it myself," Painter said. "That’s it more than anything. I want to see it. I always feel like if I don’t see it, it’s as much someone’s opinion on what they think is good and I’d rather see it myself. Sometimes I have a tough time, even though I talk a lot, I have a tough time explaining what I see at times or what I feel at times. I just know it when I see it.”

But you might not see him.

In another uncommon way about Painter, he attends high school games to see, not be seen.

While a lot of coaches may situate themselves courtside, to maximize eye-balls, intentionally or not, countless anecdotal examples exist of Painter gravitating to the rafters, or tucking himself into a corner at floor level, out of plain sight. The people who matter most, the player and his family, will know he's there, he says. After games, he'll quietly slip downstairs to the locker room to speak with the high school coach.

While he admits to not being particularly eager to draw attention to himself in large crowds, he does have basketball-specific reasons for that approach.

"I also feel that that high school coach has a job to do and me sitting front row, I don’t think I help that high school coach do his job," Painter said. "Are they there to impress me? They shouldn’t be, but I know how I felt when I got recruited. I was thinking about doing well in front of those college coaches, and I should have been listening to my high school coach. And I feel that, so I don’t want to come down there and make his job harder. He needs to get his team, and young people, especially if you’re recruiting young guys, there’s a lot of jealousy. So if you get a freshman who’s starting on varsity and you get juniors and seniors and it’s their turn in their mind, and now this guy’s playing all the time, that’s a hard dynamic. It’s a hard dynamic for anybody, so I don’t want to make that more difficult for the kid, for the family, or for the coach. I am always going to have compassion for a high school coach. They’re there, they want their kids to be seen, they want to help kids. But they also need to win games themselves, and I don’t want to make that more difficult."

This season, Painter has frequently delved into post-game spiels about this topic or another, whether it was his virally spread Crossroads Classic soliloquy about the challenges of, but importance of, players "getting over themselves" for their teams, or his comments about recruiting shortly after his team clinched its share of the Big Ten title in the regular season finale at Northwestern.

People often look at Purdue as some sort of outlier in terms of its ability to win without a full cupboard of elite high school talent, and that's been true, but only to a point. The Boilermakers have had their share of well-regarded recruits, some of them playing central roles on this team now.

But if seniors are the faces of their teams, then this year's Purdue team does fit that perception more than others.

Ryan Cline has obviously proven himself to be a very good college player in his career. But when he committed to Purdue, he did so over an offer from Belmont. He committed to the Boilermakers open to redshirting, if not eager to.

And his classmate and fellow captain and starter, Grady Eifert, is a walk-on.

While sharing the court with a supreme talent like Carsen Edwards and highly regarded former recruits like Nojel Eastern and Trevion Williams, Cline and Eifert have filled roles at Purdue, Cline having now graduated out of the label "role player," though.

Neither "knock you over with their presence," Painter said, a nod to the age-old look test, which neither Cline nor Eifert fare particularly well in from an athletic perspective.

But while such things are considered by every coach out recruiting anywhere, they do not top Painter's list of hot buttons.

"(People get) excited about somebody getting a dunk, or getting an alley-oop," Painter said after Northwestern. "Who wants to sit around and watch somebody work the ball around? Let's be honest: What do you pay attention to in highlights, on 'SportsCenter'? I don't want to see that.

"It gets people excited about those types (of player), and gets people away from the types that are solid. You have to have pieces in this game. Do you have to have a couple of those (more talented) guys? No question. We're not sitting up here without Caleb Swanigan or Carsen Edwards or Isaac Haas or Vincent Edwards. We're just not. But the pieces around those guys make for a good team."

And for that reason, Painter says, he isn't automatically drawn to the most talented players he sees.

“There have been some really good players I just didn’t offer, I didn’t go on," he said. "I just didn’t think that we were going to mesh and I think sometimes when you have people already in your program that you know are good, that are going to play, you have to do a good job in bringing people in with them. So that plays a role in it sometimes. I can only take on so much.”

Asked then if his philosophy can be described better as "team-building" than "talent aggregation," Painter falls back to the term he seems to build his recruiting outlook around: "Production."

Painter says there's no one recruit he landed or lost that influenced his approach to recruiting over any other, but if there was a class, it might have been his very first one, a group he put together while serving as Purdue's associate head coach/full-time recruiter on Gene Keady's last staff.

Of that class, only one player made it to Year 2, let alone graduation.

Nate Minnoy and Korey Spates, while talented, fit poorly at Purdue, and didn't last long. Chris Lutz, after a solid freshman season, transferred out, leaving only Marcus Green among the freshmen who joined the program that year. Painter spoke then about that class' collapse underscoring the need to find "Purdue fits," regretting that with his first class, he leaned more toward raw ability.

"What changed me more than anything was taking people who I thought would be good here and they absolutely weren’t and that was my fault," Painter said. "I didn't do a good job. I didn't do a good job with my assistants and letting them know what I wanted, so I had to be more assertive, but I had to do a better job at evaluating myself.

"I like people that are skilled and coachable, I like people that work, even people that are difficult to deal with, if they’ll work, they will find their way with me. I like people that have a passion for the game.”

Many years later, if there was a team that guided his approach from the point forward, it was it was the 2012-13 team, Painter's first losing record since the hopelessness of Year 1, then the 2013-14 that followed it, the one that finished last in the Big Ten.

Among the many issues with those teams was a distinct lack of skill.

Frankly, they couldn't shoot.

For Painter, that was a line in the sand.

He began asking himself, and maybe those around him, 'Why can't we get the best shooter in the Midwest?' and later unofficially laid out a mandate that every recruiting class include a shooter, however you might define it. Since, every class has.

But that mandate wasn't just about the players, but about the net being cast.

Soon as Painter was hired at his alma mater, he worked his home state as the foundation of his recruiting approach. It yielded the famed Robbie Hummel-E'Twaun Moore-JaJuan Johnson-Scott Martin class of 2007.

But the focus on Indiana also, Painter came to believe, was too narrow.

When you need shooters, for example, what if Indiana doesn't have any when you need them? Or what if it does and they go somewhere else?

For Painter, he came to realize that the best players he could get from Indiana and the best players he could he could get for Purdue weren't always the same thing. Indiana will always be a starting point for the Boilermaker program in recruiting, but after those teams, it was made clear it also wouldn't be the end point.

Nobody puts a face on this more than Dakota Mathias, perhaps the most skilled offensive player Painter's coached at Purdue. Painter and assistant coach Greg Gary identified him quickly as being straight out of central casting for Purdue's needs at that moment, and they recruited him accordingly, rolling the figurative dice by using most of their contacts with him early in hopes of getting him committed quickly, before others saw in him what only Painter and Bob Huggins, among high-major head coaches, at least, did.

Since last September, so much about college basketball has been laid bare by the FBI's years-long investigation, which has resulted in prison sentences for some of the influencers involved and cost several coaches their jobs, with more undoubtedly to come. NCAA investigations are beginning.

When news of all this broke last fall, Painter was casually asked whether this school or that school, or this coach or that coach, might get caught up in it.

"I just know that Matt's not getting caught up in it," he joked.

While the drama has centered largely on apparel companies' involvement in, well, buying players for certain schools, and every high-level school in college basketball both has apparel company connections and recruits off their grassroots circuits — raising a certain measure of "you never know" for any school — Purdue genuinely breathes easier than anyone.

Asked if the FBI's work and subsequent findings have validated him or his program in any way, Painter brushes the suggestion off, saying he believes anyone caught up in it deserves due process and anyone found guilty deserves punishment. Though there's a measure of moral ambiguity involved in such "cheating," depending on your view of the amateurism model, rules are rules, and Painter has said it a thousand times: "You shouldn't be rewarded for doing what you're supposed to do."

But cheating is prevalent, and the past 18 months or so have brought into the public eye what's been an open secret about the game for generations.

The jaded fan might be correct when they think that few violators of NCAA rules get caught, and when they do, they might not necessarily feel it, though the early returns from the FBI's investigation have been significant, and perhaps only the beginning of the fallout.

But up until this point in the game's history, winning at the highest level has very often been done by those playing the fastest and loosest with the rules. That's not speculation; that's reality.

Painter's lost players to impropriety, as a lot of coaches have, and he's been asked for this or that by a recruit or the people around him, as a lot of coaches have. But anecdotal evidence exists of Purdue coaches setting their stance from the outset of a recruitment: "We're doing it this way, and if that isn't going to work, let us know now, please." Anecdotal evidence also exists of Painter using his career — and contract — as things he's not willing to risk, his judgment-free out when such topics might come up with recruits or those involved with them.

Painter was asked, then, plainly: Why not cheat?

"Because that’s not who I am," Painter said. "It’s simple.

"Why would you cheat? That doesn’t make any sense to me. I think any time you’ve worked hard and you’ve done things straight up, there’s that sense of pride that you get from doing it. We face teams and we play against other teams and people speculate that they cheat or they don’t do things that right way and that’s their choice. Instead of demonizing those people, I’d rather keep our focus on what we’re doing and if that was the case and you’re doing those things and it’s leading to wins, you’re getting a result through something improper. You’re teaching people, you’re teaching kids, to take shortcuts and be on the take and that isn’t life. You won’t have success in life by taking shortcuts and being on the take. Eventually, that’s going to get you in a poor spot financially, in a poor spot with your family, in a poor spot professionally, and the people that do it and are on the take and don’t look at it like there’s anything wrong with it, that’s just not right. They look at the money we create. I’ve yet to look at a coach who got into coaching to make money, you just don’t. I didn’t get into coaching to be the head coach at Purdue. It’s something that had somebody asked me the question when I was 22, I’d be like, ‘Yeah, I’d love to be the head coach at Purdue,’ but you didn’t think about it then. You thought about it because you liked basketball and you liked people. I played major college basketball. If I didn’t like the sport, I wouldn’t be a coach, I can do more things than just be a coach even though I don’t want to do those things. I can still do those things, I can do them, I have the capacity to think and make decisions.

"What’s the joy out of doing something, breaking a rule to get to the end result? I would walk around, I’d feel dirty, that I’ve cheated, there’s no satisfaction to me in doing something like that. But it’s also something that’s hard for me to even answer because that’s how I was brought up. You were brought up to do the right things, that doesn’t mean I was perfect, because I wasn’t when I was growing up, but it was still something where you don’t cheat in cards, you don’t cheat in basketball, you don’t cheat, you just don’t. You just put your best foot forward, work hard and it’ll work out for you.”

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