The email came late Sunday night. Matt Painter and players would not be available for media on Monday ahead of #1 Purdue's trip to Nebraska on Tuesday.
Purdue decided to leave for Nebraska early Monday morning with blizzard like conditions set to come through Nebraska later that Monday. Unfortunately for Purdue, despite the early arrival, it couldn't avoid the final storm as Nebraska pulled off the upset against the #1 team in the country on Tuesday evening.
And as what always happens when Purdue loses, a storm followed.
Matt Rhule, Nebraska's football coach, and Nebraska's AD joined a throng of students that jostled, ran, and jumped around on the court after the 88-72 beating of Purdue.
"Our freshmen, sophomores, juniors have never lost a road game without a court storm," Matt Painter said after the game. "Think about that."
There's a lot to talk about when the #1 team loses even if this is the Big Ten and road upsets are the norm, especially early in the conference schedule. As Painter suggested, this isn't an unusual position. When Purdue loses, especially in the last three seasons, it's a big deal. It hasn't happened often.
I've never been asked to write anything specifically after a loss by head coach Matt Painter. Maybe in jest, now that I think about it, but Painter wasn't having fun with this one. It wasn't the loss. Painter and this program knows that part of the rub of being this good is team's give them their best shot. It also means, when these upsets happen, an unsavory situation is about to follow.
"We gotta do something about the court storms, guys," Painter goes on to say after I asked him about the three-game streak of flagrant fouls. Painter is one of the best quotes in the game, a thoughtful coach who has never ducked hard questions or hard moments. Not after losses in March, not after a loss at Northwestern, and not after this loss.
"I don't know why institutions aren't ready for them," said about the court storms. "Like what did you think was going to happen if they won? Spread the word. Spread the word before somebody gets hurt. A student should be able to storm the court, right? Like, we're cool. But Get ready for it if that's what you're going to do. We're struggling in our conference with that."
It's not a particularly fun message to share. This night is about Nebraska's best performance of the season. It's about maybe the best win by any team this season. That should and will be the headline.
But if one of these upsets leads to a court storm where, God forbid, something does happen? That's all we'll be talking about.
So Painter is telling us what to write, and i'm listening and writing about it because as usual, he's right.
"Put that in your article," Painter said. "Because somebody's gonna get hurt. Someone's gonna get hurt. Could be a student. Could be one of Nebraska's guys. Could be one of our guys. Could be someone working the scorer's bench. Could be anybody but I don't know why people don't get ahead of it. It's happened a lot and I just don't understand that."
The beauty of college basketball lives in those court storms. The joy, the energy, but there's also the chance of something turning ugly - it almost happened at Northwestern as Mason Gillis had to go in and retrieve Braden Smith from a throng of storming students. It was too close a call.
For Mason Gillis' credit, he has a solution for court storms for Purdue.
"I do think the schools are doing a better job," Gillis said after the Nebraska loss. "But we gotta prevent it ourselves. We can't take losses on the road."
That's a player's answer, but the people around the game, security and school administrations, have a responsibility to not allow the thrill of an upset succumb to the danger of a storm.
Thankfully the story today is about Nebraska's win, but what about next time?
