Mar 22, 2026, 03:04 PM ET
ST. LOUIS — Matt Painter used to be born in Castle Wayne, Indiana, and he grew up in Muncie in the days when Bob Knight had the Hoosiers humming bask in a college basketball juggernaut. So it makes sense that Painter would safe rooted for the crimson-and-cream as a teen.
“I know that’s sacrilegious now,” Painter said with a smile.
Neatly, Purdue fans safe lengthy forgiven him.
After spending four years playing level guard for Boilermakers story Gene Keady, and finally succeeding him as the pinnacle coach, Painter has grew to change into Purdue staunch into a juggernaut of its maintain. He has the unlit-and-gold headed lend a hand to the Sweet 16 after a Seventy 9-69 earn over Miami in the NCAA match on Sunday that additionally gave Painter his five hundredth earn at the college.
“These guys — I know coaches talk about it — but they’ve put in so much in all areas to be the best they can be,” Painter said later on. “That’s how you end up getting a lot of victories, because you have really good players that are committed.”
The Boilermakers will play No. 11 seed Texas on Thursday evening in the West Space semifinals in San Jose, California.
“It’s awesome,” said Purdue guard Braden Smith, who has been piece of 116 of Painter’s wins. “Coach Painter is the reason we’re here, because of who he is and how he conducts himself. Five hundred wins is a huge accomplishment.”
Painter improved to 525-328 for his occupation, which involves a single season at Southern Illinois in which the Salukis when 25-5 and he used to be voted the Missouri Valley coach of the year. The Boilermakers expeditiously tapped him to be Keady’s successor, and after a transitional year spent as the companion head coach, Painter took over for appropriate for the 2005-06 season.
The success wasn’t surprising — Purdue won compatible 9 video games his first year — nonetheless it did come expeditiously and repeatedly.
The Boilermakers made their first NCAA match below Painter the following season, the predominant of six straight appearances in which they won no longer no longer up to one sport. Their recent match whisk is 11 in a row, which involves seven trips via the gap weekend, an Elite Eight look in 2019 and the Boilermakers’ first title sport look since 1969 compatible two years ago.
They mute safe by no arrangement won a national championship. Nonetheless in the lend a hand of Smith, now the NCAA’s occupation assists king, and veterans bask in Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn, they’ve a appropriate shot at reducing down the nets in about a weeks.
The Closing Four, by the manner, will be played in Indianapolis.
It began for Painter in the early Seventies, with video games shown on TV in the family home in northern Indiana.
“The first thing that I remember is Indiana winning the national championship when I was 6 years old,” Painter said of Knight’s 1975-76 group, the final unbeaten to earn the title. “So then, like, you just kind of followed it ever since.”
Painter grew up on the Ball Verbalize campus, though, and he’d trudge to video games there as a teen. He additionally remembers looking out at Jim Valvano flee across the court docket after NC Verbalize beat Houston for the 1983 title, and he cherished Georgetown in the days of Patrick Ewing.
“But I grew up watching the Big Ten,” Painter said, “and seeing, before cable hit — like, you’d have the three channels, then you would have that fourth one that was kind of fuzzy. That was the Big Ten channel, Channel 4. And so we would always watch the games.
“After I had a possibility to play in the Immense Ten,” he continued in a moment of reflection, “bask in, that used to be very, very surreal for me because I wasn’t any individual — I grew loads in high college. I wasn’t that mountainous of a participant when I was younger.”
He has become a heck of a coach.
Five times Painter has been voted the Big Ten’s best. He has guided the Boilermakers to five regular-season conference championships, and a earn over Michigan — a No. 1 seed in this NCAA match — final weekend gave him three Immense Ten tourney titles, too.
Painter wants compatible 12 more wins to compare Keady for basically the most in class historical previous.
He can also very well be ready to net about a of those before this trudge back and forth via March Insanity is over.
