Purdue's Matt Painter has been one of best coaches of his generation win or lose vs. UConn

GLENDALE, Ariz. — On the night of his most public, humiliating failure as a college coach, Purdue coach Matt Painter got a text message from Virginia’s Tony Bennett.

It was March 17, 2023 − the date a second member joined a club no basketball coach ever wants to be in. Painter’s team had just lost to Fairleigh Dickinson, joining Bennett in NCAA men's tournament infamy as the only No. 1 seeds ever to lose to a No. 16.

In a profession where misery eventually comes for all of them, their connection was unique. Painter and Bennett had undeniably done everything right: Built programs that won big year after year, had reputations for following the rules and handled themselves with class regardless of situation. 

And yet this tournament − this stinking, beautiful, crazy, often inexplicable tournament − had made them look like losers. 

"You're at a low," Painter said Sunday. "But it's not who you are. It’s what you do for a living. It means a whole lot, but it’s not who you are. You try to keep that in perspective." 

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Virginia famously came back 12 months after its meltdown against Maryland-Baltimore County to win the national championship. Purdue will have an opportunity to do the exact same thing on Monday night, a comparison that Painter called "an accurate narrative." 

But whether or not Purdue can pull it off against Connecticut − a team that has dominated this tournament the last two years − maybe we’re doing this all wrong. 

Painter is now a Final Four coach. By Monday night, he may be a national championship coach.

Nobody would argue that these designations don’t matter. In sports, we draw lines between those who win big things and those who don’t because they are tangible achievements that mark history and identify greatness. That’s how it works. We celebrate the winners and ask the losers what went wrong. It will never change. 

But when you consider the entire picture for a coach like Painter, it’s worth asking what matters more: Whether he puts a national title on his résumé or that he has managed to be good every year, to be in the mix almost without fail, to have a team worthy of being considered a disappointment if it happens to have a bad day on the wrong day.

"The problem with a really tough loss when it ends your season is you don’t have another game," Painter said. "You have to sit in it. You have to take it. Some of that is healthy in a sense. It's why I try to keep our players from going into coaching because there's such a level of misery."

It’s misery Painter knows more intimately than most. The Fairleigh Dickinson loss wasn't his only dance with the wrong Cinderella: There was a second-round loss to Final Four-bound Virginia Commonwealth in 2011, a Little Rock upset in 2016, a North Texas disaster in 2021 and an inexplicable performance in the 2022 Sweet 16 against Saint Peter’s when the path to a Final Four seemed wide open.

Every coach, if you’re in this tournament long enough, will have a few of those résumé pock marks. Mike Krzyzewski. John Calipari. Bill Self. Lute Olson. Billy Donovan. It happened to all of them.

But if you lose enough games like that without enough counterbalancing postseason success, a program and a coach get a reputation: Chokers. Soft. Not built for March. Pick your slur. That’s part of the deal, too. And Painter, to his immense credit, has never run from it. In some ways, he built this team because of it, understanding he needed more athleticism and shooting around a once-in-a-lifetime center like Zach Edey to take this program to the next level. 

"Just try to be honest about your mistakes, try to be honest about everything," he said. "It’s an inexact science at times, especially from a recruiting standpoint. But learn from your tough losses and don’t run from ‘em. Face ‘em. That’s what we’ve tried to do."

The Purdue path is a fascinating contrast with UConn and Danny Hurley, who have earned the aura of March monsters. If you were to ask most college basketball fans how his first two NCAA tournament trips with the Huskies ended, it's unlikely many would remember that he was on the wrong side of a 7-10 upset to Maryland and then got bounced the next year by New Mexico State. 

Winning a championship, as UConn did last season, is the ultimate coaching deodorizer.

"We can relate," Hurley said, noting that he "felt the heat” going into UConn’s first tournament game last year against Iona. 

"For them, it was probably even more than that. But they’re such a classy program. Their culture is as good as anyone. They're as well-coached as anyone. You could see they had an attitude about them going into this tournament, throughout the season, where I don't think anyone thought this would be a similar situation for them. But I can certainly relate to the pressure they felt."

Is that pressure fair? Not always − and that’s our fault. As fans. As media members. As people who are capable of understanding probabilities and variance but choose to focus mostly on the results of a one-and-done crapshoot sporting event. 

Here’s the more important narrative about Painter, regardless of whether he got Purdue to the Final Four this year: In 19 seasons at Purdue, he’s been to the tournament 15 times. He’s finished among the top three teams in the Big Ten regular season standings 12 times with three outright titles and a couple conference tournament championships.

That makes Painter not just a winner but one of the best coaches of his generation, full stop. That makes Purdue the program every non-blueblood wants to be like. 

Why did it take until now to finally appreciate it? 

It’s because this tournament, for all its greatness, is a fundamentally silly exercise in picking a champion. And it should never, ever change. 

The best you can do is exactly what Painter has done, exactly like what Bennett did at Virginia, exactly like what Scott Drew did at Baylor and exactly like what Donovan did before that at Florida: Get enough at-bats with good teams that you eventually hit one out of the park. 

"You don’t pick your dreams," Painter said. "We all understand some of our dreams are nightmares, too. You don’t pick those either. That piece of it, being able to go through it, to feel that, I think it helps you get on edge, helps you be a little sharper.

"I think you only need to do it once, though. We’ve done it multiple times."

But that’s what greatness in college basketball really looks like: The stink bombs, the breakthroughs, the never-ending chase for something that seems both close and unattainable all at the same time. 

If Purdue wins on Monday, it won't erase any of the good or bad things that happened before. It will only close the circle.