Purdue basketball Final Four: from the ashes to Phoenix

The Hohokam people lived in the Mesa area for nearly 1,500 years. Their name, a Pima Indiana word, means "Those who disappeared."

The Hohokam people grew too large for sustainable living in the barren desert area conditions in what is now Arizona. So they dug - trenches and tunnels of irrigation that allowed them to expand and farm. From the first year AD to somewhere around 1450 AD they prospered and then one day, they disappeared. No one knows why.

In 800 years of turning dirt into irrigation, a people flourished, and then vanished.

The canals stretched for 500 miles.

Some 400 years later, the ghosts of those canals were discovered and revived, once again creating a hospitable environment for growth and a city.

As all good stories of the wild west, this one includes an ex-military discovering something and a former 'noble' naming it.

Jack Swilling, a veteran, created the Swilling Irrigating Canal Company responsible for reanimating the canals.

Englishman "Lord" Darrell Dupa then recognized the symbolism of the new civilization rising up from old Hohokam canals.

"A city will rise phoenix-like, new and beautiful, from these ashes of the past," he's said to have said, and from those clever ashes a city was named.

Phoenix, Arizona, is now a sprawling metropolis of 4.7 million people that stretches between mountain ranges, over red clay, filled with venomous snakes and unforgiving heat. It never seems to end. An Uber driver tells me it's 92 miles from one end to the other when he drops me off at the stadium.

Phoenix is the host site of this year's NCAA Final Four.

Purdue will play in its first Final Four since 1980, a program that has been revitalized and grown on the tributaries dug out by Gene Keady some forty years ago.

It's important to remember where we came from even if only to appreciate where we are.

Purdue could have been a team of ashes this season. It probably hasn't gotten enough credit for that, not crumbling, and instead getting closer together.

"I would say the FDU loss brought us together," Mason Gillis said Friday, the day before Purdue plays together in Phoenix. "Depending on the type of people you have, going through a traumatic experience, everybody handles it and responds differently. And I think the best thing we did was stick together."

"We were able to sit in one of our houses and watch some of the games. We didn't really want to, but just kind of sitting in it, together, and being able to - me ask Zach questions. Or me ask Fletcher questions like 'Damn, how do you guys feel about this?' Just simply that instead of separating and getting away from each other and never talking about it. We were able to sit together."

That communication extended throughout the season, continuously providing nourishment when things got the toughest.

"When drills got tough," Gillis said. "We reminded each other of the loss that we took. We reminded each other Virginia took the loss when they won the National Championship."

That duality became something of a calling card for the summer of working towards improvement. It was a message that Gillis said brought the team together. The one good thing about being on the wrong side of a historic loss, the only people that could understand that feeling were in the locker room with each other.

"Constant reminders of our goal and constant reminders of our failures," Gillis said. "Having both of that we were able to slowly gravitate towards each other because nobody else went through that situation."

Gillis was in his fourth year last season at Purdue, but a lot of that Purdue team was new to this. Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer were both true freshmen. Gillis' role as a protector on the court extends off the court where it wasn't his young guys' bodies he had to worry about, but their mentals.

"Just understand who you are," Gillis said about what he told his young guys. "A loss doesn't define you. One simple day, one action, one game doesn't define you. You know it's a series of things that happen that define you. And so if you guys stay on top of those, if you work, and you get better and you prove it next year we can bounce back from it. It wasn't our last game. It wasn't the end of our careers. It was something we had to go through to get here... That was my message to them."

From ashes to the Final Four...

A few 'breakout' rooms away, Zach Edey is fielding similar questions for 25 minute, just more of them, as national media crowds around the 7-4, back to back National Player of the Year. Edey, also like Gillis, is a senior, a leader.

But while Gillis offered protection to his younger players, Edey offered understanding.

"I think they might be freshmen, but they've never acted like freshmen," Edey said. "So I was never worried about them getting emotionally distraught. I knew they'd bounce back. I knew they'd be alright this year."

Part of Purdue's purpose this season has been its belief in itself. A large part of that belief is grounded on Zach Edey's once in a generation dominance.

Unsurprisingly, Zach Edey and Braden Smith are on the same wavelength. That unspoken connection has sparked Purdue's brilliance this season, creating the most dominant one two combo in the country on the court.

If there's anyone that believes in Braden Smith as much as Braden Smith, it's Zach Edey.

"Personally, no," Smith said on if he needed to hear those words from Gillis. "It's obviously nice to have. But, me, I think so much. I'm very critical of myself. It's just another thing to have."

That stubbornness and self-assuredness has taken Smith from a 7 turnover performance against FDU last season to the best point guard in the Final Four, and maybe in the country at large.

Smith has shined on the floor in the tournament, threatening triple-doubles in each of his last two games.

"I think Mason just says it every single day," Smith said. "Before practice. Before games. After practice. After games. He just says all that stuff doesn't define us. We worked our butts off to be here so kind of deserve to be here."

This year, Purdue has freshmen, too, and this year they're coming off the bench providing a spark and athleticism, scoring and defense. Myles Colvin and Camden Heide have altered how Painter can use his bench. They're proof in change of concept for a Coach that believed in his team's path, but needed help on the edges.

Heide wore a redshirt during Purdue's loss in the NCAA Tournament last year, but he also wears the loss on his chest. There's indignation there, too.

"A lot of people think that one game defines Purdue basketball," Heide said. "And that March defines Purdue basketball."

When this week ends, Zach Edey, Mason Gillis, Ethan Morton, Carson Barrett, and Chase Martin will vanish from Purdue's roster. A new age of Purdue will start.

Behind them, a thriving program amongst a world of college programs lost in the desert.

For the first time, it feels appropriate to judge Purdue on March. It's now in the place its dreamt of, a game away from a game away.

Regardless of the outcome of those games, something has changed at Purdue. It didn't happen last weekend in Detroit, and it won't happen because of this weekend in Phoenix.

It starts with a kid from Newcastle whose knees betrayed him in high school. It started in Toronto, and a kid who decided that basketball would be his future.

It starts in the ashes.

"Obviously Purdue was good before me," Edey told me. "But the year before I got here they were about to miss the tournament. And to kind of have taken the program to where it's been the last few years. Now we get ranked #1 in the country and people don't even bat an eye. I remember the first time we did that, it was a really big deal. To take the program to where it's been now, it's like - I put it above all the awards I got. Just to kind of have left Purdue in the state that it's in."

In a city that was named for a metaphor, Purdue gets a chance to become its own.

On top of a program that was already proud, Purdue is building more.

Welcome to Phoenix, welcome to the Final Four.