The story of Purdue's season: So close to so much

PHILADELPHIA — Purdue won 29 games this season — one shy of a school record — and earned its first-ever No. 1 ranking nationally, part of a season the Boilermakers spent ranked in the top 10 start to finish.

None of that could possibly have been top of mind Friday night in Philadelphia, as Matt Painter and his team saw their season cut short, so close to so much.

Prior to falling to Saint Peter's at the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, Purdue finished one game shy of sharing the Big Ten regular season title and lost to Iowa in the championship game of the Big Ten Tournament.

"You feel for your players, you feel for your seniors," Coach Matt Painter said following his post-game press conference after the Saint Peter's game. "You were close to winning a league title, we were close to winning the (Big Ten) Tournament and we were close to being in a position to go to a Final Four, and we just came up a little bit short when you won 29 games. It's just a hard thing when you put so much into it, and you don't play your best. It's really hard to take."

The gap between Purdue winning those 29 games and the superlatives that came with them and Purdue winning championships and maybe even making its first Final Four since 1980 was relatively small.

Some of the absolute benchmark elements Painter aims to build teams around, as Gene Keady did before him, betrayed the Boilermakers.

Purdue turned the ball over way too much and at way too high a cost. The loss at Michigan State really was the game that cost Purdue the Big Ten title, as it turned out, though obviously any number of close games going the other way could have changed that, also. That Michigan State game was 100-percent about turnovers.

The loss to Iowa in the Big Ten Tournament title game was 100-percent about turnovers. And the Saint Peter's loss was a multi-layered outcome, but turnovers were the layer that mattered most.

For an offense touted all season as one of college basketball's elite, that was the fatal flaw that wound up leaving Purdue's season short of so much, the self-destructive habit that canceled out so much of what gave this team's advantages.

Particularly when other areas amplified the issue.

One of them was foul shooting, another matter that combined at times with the turnover issue to cost Purdue games.

Another was a defense that improved considerably the past several weeks, but took too long to click and still wound up as the unit that couldn't keep Saint Peter's off the foul line when it mattered most.

The defensive turbulence might have been born in part from Purdue's offensive potency, especially early in the season, as the Boilermakers rolled to the championship of the Hall of Fame Tip-Off event in Connecticut, beating North Carolina and Villanova, at least one of which — maybe both — will play in the Final Four.

"We didn't go away from that," Painter said of his career-long emphasis on defense, framed against this year's difficulties. "People look at that like you went away from that as a coach. No, we don't go away from that stuff. We did not build good enough habits through discipline at the defensive end. You saw at the end, we were much better. But we also outscored people. That's why you'd see us come up short in a couple of areas, because now when you turn the ball over, it's catastrophic, whereas you should be able to overcome that with better defense. We just didn't. The turnovers really got us, but it really got us because we weren't as good from a defensive standpoint.

"We just need to keep doing what we're doing. I don't think that as a staff we're doing anything wrong. I think when you look at the analytics and numbers and see us in the top 25 the past six or seven years, I think we know how to defend, know what we're doing.

"Your personnel's going to change, but you keep working on those things, and sometimes when you have really talented guys, now you've got to try to develop some of those things, and as you're going along, you're winning, so it's like, 'What's the problem?'"

To that end, a team that was probably the most talented Painter's coached was maybe the least Purdue-like of any of the really good one he's coached.

This was an outstanding team, one of the best in college basketball. It just wasn't quite good enough to be great.

And so, a season in which Purdue's Final Four hopes seemed especially credible — Painter admits the drought weighs on him — fell short.

Painter was asked what it will take to get over the hump.

"I don't think it's any one thing," Painter said. "It's, collectively, just being a little bit better."

That's all Purdue needed to be this season and it might have happened.

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