MINNEAPOLIS — Tuesday, the first day of Big Ten Basketball Media Day(s) in Minneapolis, Purdue coach Matt Painter and preseason all-conference center Zach Edey took the Target Center stage to talk about the season ahead and much more.

Here are some Purdue-focused notes and interviews from the Tuesday session.

Purdue is wary of its lack of experience in the backcourt, but also has clearly been comforted by the first impression made by freshman Braden Smith, the Boilermakers' lone pure point guard and the overwhelmingly likely choice to be the lead player at that position.

"Braden Smith is a fabulous player," Painter said. "How he wasn't ranked in the top 75, top 100 ... (the media) will have the same question after the first month of the season."

After sitting out the summer recovering from foot surgery, Smith has stood out through Purdue's practices since the fall semester began.

He's one of two freshman guards Purdue will count heavily on, the other being combo guard Fletcher Loyer. Painter has often spoken of commonalities between the two in terms of their basketball IQs and general make-ups as players.

In this year's annual independent preseason media poll, Indiana was tabbed as the preseason Big Ten favorite, with Illinois close behind, while Michigan, Purdue and Iowa all also received first-place votes.

The results of that poll underscored the legitimate belief that this year's Big Ten is as open as ever.

"It feels like a wide-open year," said BTN analyst and former Purdue captain Rapheal Davis. "People are calling it a down year, but I don't think that's the case at all. You look at last year and no one knew that Johnny Davis would be that good and Wisconsin was picked 10th. Nobody knew Keegan Murray would be that good after (Iowa) lost Luka Garza. This year I think it's wide-open for anybody to win it. I think Indiana would be considered the favorite because who they're bringing back and what they did toward the end of the year, but from top to bottom, I think it's wide open, not as bad as people think."

Painter's developed a rep at these events for breaking from the standard milquetoast, hope-springs-eternal script on occasion and he certainly did to open his spiel on stage, using his opening statement to essentially throw himself under the bus for his team underachieving — a term he's used to describe Purdue's 29-win season — last season.

"It was a tough year for us because we thought we had a team that could do more damage than we did," Painter said. "As a coach, you take sole responsibility for that. You're just trying as a coach to be better for our program and be better for our team. I thought we should have won our league, I thought we should have won our (conference) tournament and I thought we should have gotten to a Final Four and we didn't do any of those three things. Our talent was just a little bit above our production.

"That's a key for any coach, to make a team more productive than its talent and we've had a lot of success with that. Coach Keady was marvelous at that, with his teams and his program at Purdue for 25 years. We've tried to take that blueprint, and last year even though we won 29 games and went to a Sweet 16, we didn't quite get to that point. From a coaching standpoint, I have to be better for us, better for our guys and hopefully we can do that this year."

Painter continues to mention his frontcourt — Zach Edey and forwards Mason Gillis, Caleb Furst and Trey Kaufman-Renn — as one of the best in college basketball, "if not the best."

"I think we have one of the best frontlines in the country and I really like our guard play," Painter said. "I don't like our experience at the guard positions, but it's also a great opportunity for young players. How well we (do) together is really going to be key, everybody being on the same page, everybody growing and everybody being ready to play."

Purdue will have to live with inexperience in the backcourt.

"That's why they pay us," Painter said. "You have to get them ready for something they haven't gone through at the college level, but they have played basketball before.

"Getting them to understand everything that's coming their way but also be confident, that's an interesting balance."

Purdue's spent a great deal of time in preseason practice working on press break and in-bounding the ball against pressure.

Painter noted that Purdue has noted pressers West Virginia, Marquette and Florida State on its non-conference schedule, but also said that given his team's youth and lack of depth at guard, he figures Purdue might see a little more pressure.

"We're just trying to organically see who's good, who's bad, who's indifferent," Painter said. "What we need to work on, what we need to continue."

• Painter on Ethan Morton: "He has that opportunity to play through his mistakes. It's really hard to be a functional player in inconsistent minutes. He's gotten inconsistent minutes. To his credit, whenever he's gotten opportunities, he's been pretty productive. Now he has an opportunity to play a whole lot more. Really for him, It's about doing a little bit of everything. He's a good defender, he's a good rebounder. He can pass the basketball and you can where all of his hard work shooting the basketball has paid off. He can knock down open shots and just kind of be that Swiss Army knife for us, where he's doing a lot of different things.

"He's gonna do a lot more point guard things and that's something we talked with him in recruiting about him doing, trying to have a cross-matchup with him (playing with David Jenkins or Fletcher Loyer). ... I'm looking forward to it. I think he's going to have a great year."

• Painter said he'll talk to this year's junior class about the possibility of them using their COVID years at the back ends of their careers after this season. His stance on the extra years is that anyone who wants to use them is welcome to.

This would apply to Mason Gillis, Brandon Newman, Zach Edey and Ethan Morton.

They'll be the last scholarship players Purdue will have eligible to exercise the COVID year option.

• Guard Brandon Newman has missed most of the past few practices due to a sore back. Painter said he expected Newman to practice on Tuesday night.

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