College basketball is in a fantastic spot

How Matt Painter's favorite offseason tradition holds larger meaning

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Matt Painter has a quirky offseason habit. Nearly every fall, with rare exceptions, Painter insists to media members that he intends to play the two most talented big men on his roster — usually two centers, because he always has a spare center handy — together.

He said as much in 2019, when his roster included both Matt Haarms and Trevion Williams; the two started six games together, Purdue went 2-4, Painter ditched the idea, and Haarms transferred a few weeks after the end of the campaign. Two seasons ago, in the fall of 2021, Painter revealed to Brendan Quinn grand plans of Williams at the four and promising sophomore center Zach Edey at the five. Brendan, comedically, asked Matt to repeat himself:

That’s what’s coming, though, Painter says. In an effort to both fill a need due to circumstance and to alleviate a crunch for minutes at the five spot, Williams has spent half of his time in offseason workouts at the four. Just to make sure, Painter is asked to repeat. “Yes, he’ll be the four at times,” Painter says, “even though we’ve never played him there before.”

LOL. Now guess how much Williams played with Edey that season:

Source: CBB Analytics

Four minutes. Four. In the whole season! Hilarious. You could accidentally leave two guys on the court together for longer than that. It probably took until late January of that season before I finally realized all that September stuff was nonsense, all of Williams’ supposed time spent practicing at the four wasn’t going to amount to anything, that Painter wasn’t ever going to actually play these guys together. This was a very funny realization.

All of which is why one might want to greet Painter’s latest proclamations to this effect with some degree of skepticism. Having heard Purdue’s coach lay out his latest case, I couldn’t help but immediately think something different: This is awesome regardless.

For Purdue? Yeah, maybe. But it’s not really about Purdue. Whatever Painter’s rotations end up looking like, that this coach is still talking about squeezing another center onto the court with Zach Freaking Edey — that the reigning national player of the year is still around to be a part of this quirky annual tradition — says much more about college hoops than it does Purdue’s on-off splits.