Matt Painter heard the voices. They weren't hard to hear. They weren't just coming from purdue4everball2423 on twitter. His own coaches thought they might need to change. It hadn't been working. For three straight years Purdue walked into the NCAA Tournament as a favorite, and for three straight tournaments it walked away disappointed, fallen by double-digit seeds in March's cruelest test.

I don't know if Matt Painter is a religious man or not in the traditional sense.

But I know he's pious for process.

Painter's conviction has been derided, mocked as stubborn, and left as an example of the impossibility of Purdue's ability to get over the hump.


The college sports world, marred by results obsession, lost in the weeds of its bloodthirsty need for a narrative, has finally met its match in Painter.


Now Matt Painter is in the Final Four and this week is a coronation of the coach who stuck to his analytical guns, and his own basketball genius as he tweaked around the edges of a program he knew could win.

"You always lose the last game of the year unless you win a national championship," Painter tells me on Thursday in Phoenix, site of the Final Four. "I've always dove into what we're doing and tried to pick at what we're doing to make improvements. When you get beat in the first round of the NCAA Tournament by a 16 seed, that doesn't change anything."


As all men of faith, Matt Painter has been tested. North Texas, St. Peter's, and Fairleigh Dickinson all had their chapters, but on Eastern Sunday, Painter rose up above the masses to claim his first piece of Final Four twine.


Hard to not think everything has changed. Hard to not picture Painter as a prophet.