Purdue Basketball goes to the Final Four | The revolution is televised

The court is surrounded. Confetti is falling and despite what the last forty four years have told Purdue, it is gold and it is black. It seems never ending. People are grabbing handfuls and throwing it in their pockets. Camden Heide is taking a pile and putting it in his hat. He puts the hat on his head. He'll probably forget about it like he did after the Big Ten Championship.

When he pulls it off later, the mess will be beautiful.

Matt Painter is standing at the top of the arc, just inside the three point line, a few feet away from the spot where Lance Jones hit what will be known as the Lance Jones shot in a game that was as definitive the Lance Jones experience as you could have.

After guarding the best perimeter scorer in the country for 34 minutes, Jones sank the three that created the separation to close a wound that's been 44 years in the making at Purdue.

March is stories. Purdue is a circle. Matt Painter is going to the Final Four.

Robbie Hummel is calling the game. On his knees, the scars are still there. The team that could have done it. The team that never got a chance, too.

Matt Painter meets Hummel near the scorer's table where Hummel got to call a game that sent Purdue to the Final Four, finally.

The team that started this revolution, the voice of this evolution.

As the nets are coming down, so are the tears. For a program that's tasted so much pain, the sweet can be overwhelming.

Dakota Mathias is in the stands. His teams, just a fractured elbow away from having their chance. His teammate, PJ Thompson is in the locker, next to Sasha Stefanovic who had his shot, too. Now as coaches, they'll get to experience what they dreamt of as players.

Ryne Smith is imploring from just behind media seats, the fouls, the hacking, it's got to be called. It can't happen again.

Read this next tweet and tell me where in the human it hits you.

"Yeah, he [Robbie Hummel] was watering out when I got up there. That was hard," Painter said after the game about catching a moment with his former player turned star TV announcer.

Hummel, who wears Purdue's March heartbreak in scars on his knees.

"More than anything, you appreciate the guys that have played for you, and you appreciate that they had opportunities to go other places and they chose your school or they chose you, however you want to look at it."

"But we weren't very good when that class chose us. Our facilities were just okay. That's being nice. And we've really done a great job in the last 15 years of upgrading what we have."

Without those Baby Boilers, the momentum to invest might not exist. Cardinal Court might still just be a parking lot. A butterfly flaps its wings a million years ago.

Matt Painter has words. A lot of them. The story of this season is the story of Matt Painter's transformation:

"I thought when we struggled about 10 years ago, everybody talks about doing a better job recruiting, and I thought we had to do a better job evaluating because I would watch Belmont and I would watch Davidson and I'd watch guys at a mid-major level, and the best players at those places can play anywhere.

Now you're starting to see with the portal, right? Mark Sears didn't start at Ohio his freshman year. Now he was behind an NBA player in Jason Preston, and he still didn't start there. Now you look at him. There's great players everywhere. I want to get Mark Sears out of high school, right, because he had mid-major offers.

Steve Lutz was the head coach at Western Kentucky. Was the one that recruited Zach Edey. Micah Shrewsbury is the one that recruited Fletcher Loyer. I'm appreciative of those guys and what they did for our program and they helped us. I could go on about our current assistants and Brandon Brantley and Paul Lusk and Terry Johnson, and PJ Thompson is going to be an absolute star in this profession, Sasha Stefanovic. I have two GAs in Jared Walbrun and Tommy Luce that are former players.

So we've got a good group of guys. We've got younger guys that can relate to them. But we're very systematic, so you've got to -- we're systematic, and we evolve with our system, if that makes any sense. We evolve towards the strength of our best players. I talked about it the other day. I think it's a big fallacy in recruiting because everybody wants to play shortstop and lead off, but you've got one shortstop, and if Cal Ripken is there, he's probably not going to get moved.

So guys just don't grasp -- they want roles, but I want players that just want to win. I want guys that can fit into those roles and understand that. Now, you've got to have your horses right. You can't have eight guys that are eight role players. You've got to have Carsen Edwards. You've got to have Caleb Swanigan. You've got to have Zach Edey. You've got to have Braden Smith being a maestro out there. When you piece those together, now you're systematic.

A lot of people don't give us credit. We really push the basketball. Now some great teams stop us from doing that and it doesn't look that way at times, but if you let us go or you turn it over or take bad shots, we really try to push. So it's that balance of it.

We've been able to get elite big guys. If you can get a good point guard and get someone that can run the team like we have, and you have elite big guys, you can put skill and competitive spirit together. Those two qualities together is magic, man. Guys that will lay it on the line, guys that will dive on the floor.

We started recruiting Mason Gillis, and he put -- it's hard to -- sometimes when they play center. Mason Gillis played center in high school. But I'd go and watch him warm up, and I was like, man, he can shoot, but his numbers don't show he can take a lot of threes. He's just doing what's best for his high school team. He's going to be a good college player.

When I saw Fletcher Loyer and how competitive he was, he's got heavy feet, but the ball goes in and he's competitive. Coming from someone who's got heavier feet.

But those guys win the day, man. They care. That's what Lance has been able to do for us. Lance has a good competitive spirit. He has a good way about him.

And I want to have fun. I don't want to get stuck in an airport with guys I don't want to be around. Like I get to choose. It's not a school district. I get to pick. Like I want to have fun. That's selfish, but I could care less.

So like I just did a bad job -- I think we all fall into the trap of looking at talent, instead of looking at talented people that are productive. The production is what we go on, right? You're like, hey, man, this guy can jump over the moon and do a whirly bird 360, but he gets two rebounds. Who cares, then? How many breakaways are you going to get, right?

You've got to get guys, like if you look at UConn and look at those guys on their team, they are competitive, and they're nasty, and they can guard, and what they're all about, they're all about winning. He's done a great job instilling that, but I bet, if you went and talked to him, they would talk about they were that way before. He's just enhanced that stuff and been able to get it, and that's what you get.

You can learn from a lot of other people, but you'd damn sure better learn from our own mistakes, and that's what we've been able to do."

Matt Painter is standing at the top of the key, just inside the three-point line and he's looking towards the basket as his players climb, one by one, up the ladder to start cutting down the net.

Directly to his right, an 87 year old man is beaming. That man is a Hall of Famer. Gene Keady, with a Final Four hat on his head.

Keady coached at Purdue from 1980 to 2005. He coached Matt Painter. Matt Painter couldn't lead Keady to a Final Four as a player.

He's now done it as a coach.

Maybe this is right. This is better. Painter sat next to Keady for a year as an Assistant Coach. He got to pick Purdue up from where Keady started it. Now they are both here together.

We are amidst a revolution. The past is the present is the history is the future.

Purdue is going to the Final Four for the first time in 44 years.

That means there are two more games.

The thing about circles is they're a lot like trains, they don't stop. Purdue's season is just getting started.

Purdue plays NC State on Friday in Phoenix, Arizona with its eyes on the National Title.