DETROIT — The old Purdue coach took a seat while the celebration roared around him. Gene Keady had labored for this moment for a career and it never came. But now it has, and so he sat there smiling, an 87-year-old man with a piece of the regional championship net tied to the back of his cap. Zach Edey, who was two years old when Keady coached his last game at Purdue, had given it to him.
“I’m just glad to have it,” said Keady, who won 512 games at Purdue, but never this one. And once coached a young Boilermaker named Matt Painter. “It’s kind of like a dream come true.”
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Later, Edey would say, “You’ve always got to pay respect to those that came first. He built this. It doesn’t go over our heads. He helped set this all up. To be able to pay him back and give him a little piece of net, it’s the least I can do.”
Well, that and score 40 points with 16 rebounds.
Nearby, a woman in a black and gold Boilermaker shirt dabbed the tears in her eyes. Meanwhile, Painter watched his team cut down the regional title nets that had always eluded him and explained what was going through his mind.
“What I’ll reflect back on is not having to make that last speech at the end of the season that I have forever. That speech stinks. We’ve all got ‘em. Only one coach doesn’t get to use it,” he said.
“Happy for our players, happy for our fans, and happy for my man Gene Keady. It’s such an advantage to take a job and have a blueprint and have a program and have everything. Times change, schematic things evolve, but there are certain core principles that he instilled in our program that we just had to follow. It’s not easy, but it makes it easier, that’s for damn sure.”
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And that’s the way it was the Easter Sunday Purdue basketball finally came out of its long, long shadow.
Forty-four years. That’s how long it has been since the Boilermakers could say they were going to a Final Four. Until Sunday, that is, when they survived an absolute trial by fire with Tennessee 72-66; a rite of passage so intense and so badly wanted by both sides, there were four jump balls when masses of players went to the floor fighting for the basketball, like football teams trying to recover a fumble. A match made magical by the duel between the Boilermaker center who is national player of the year and the Volunteer guard who is second on most ballots. Mano a mano, Zach Edey a Dalton Knecht.
Forty points for Edey, 37 for Knecht. They combined for 77 of the 138 points – 56 percent of the points scored in an epic battle. And a late crucial play was as fitting as it was decisive, with Edey blocking a Knecht driving layup that cooked Tennessee for good. They each left nothing but admiration on the other side.
Purdue guard Braden Smith on Knecht: “He’s an unbelievable player and he showed it tonight. When somebody shoots the ball like that, there’s just not a whole lot you can do.”
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes on Edey: “We were playing against a guy that has a unique game, obviously,”
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Purdue is going to the Final Four. The last time anyone could say that, ESPN had just been born, and CNN had not yet launched. You could get a gallon of gas for buck, and a hamburger at McDonald’s for 28 cents. Mike Krzyzewski was coaching at Army, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were NBA rookies, there were professional sports teams called the Houston Oilers, Baltimore Colts and Montreal Expos. There have been eight U.S. presidents since then.
And as the long-suffering Boilermaker fans understand in their hoop-happy state, there have also been two national titles and four Final Fours for the school down the road at Indiana University. Even Butler made it twice. It was easy to feel haunted in March. Not anymore.
In those 44 years, Purdue had bounced from one heartbreak to another, like a pinball machine. Keady went to 17 tournaments and two Elite Eights but never broke through. Painter followed his mentor and went to 14 before this spring. Still, the gods of March were merciless. There were incredibly untimely injuries and tough losses, sucker punch after sucker punch.
National player of the year Glenn Robinson injured his back the night before the Elite Eight game against Duke in 1994. Local legend has it he was hurt in a pillow fight at the hotel with teammates. With a below-par Robinson, the Boilermakers lost the next day 69-60.
Robbie Hummel was three-time All-Big Ten player, but blew out his knee. Twice.
In 2018, 7-2 center Isaac Haas injured his elbow during a first-round victory and sat in the locker room afterward, assuring one and all he’d be OK for the next game. Within 30 minutes came the announcement that his elbow was broken and he was out for good.
The Boilermakers were within seconds of deliverance in the Elite Eight in 2019 when Virginia somehow turned a missed free throw and long rebound into a basket at the buzzer that forced overtime. The Cavaliers ended up the national champion.
Then came the past three painful years with losses against double-digit seeds, the awful nadir last year’s shocker to Fairleigh Dickinson.
Roll all that together and you had a star-crossed program with a tortured fan base, and a team desperate to change the narrative. Could anyone outside the Purdue circle possibly understand the hunger of those inside the circle to make the past go away?
“Zero percent chance,” said guard Fletcher Loyer. “I see fans crying, We’re crying. All the stuff we’ve been through, it’s awesome. A lot of weight off the shoulders, a lot more relaxing. But we’re not done.”
Painter has been the most conspicuous victim of this tournament wickedness, winning game after game during the season, stacking up Big Ten titles, but never able to get over the proverbial hump. “People say things about you and knock you,” he said. “You don’t like living with yourself at times.”
But no one could miss how well he has pushed the buttons on this team, right up to Sunday. The Boilermakers came in as the nation’s best 3-point shooting team but missed 12 of the 15 they put up against Tennessee. They missed 12 free throws. They were once down 11 points. But Painter and his team found a way, Throwing the ball to Edey, for instance. He shot 16 free throws in the second half.
“We’ve been through it all as a team,” Edey said. “There’s no scenario we haven’t been in before. We’re never going to panic. We’re going to keep playing, keep executing, keep doing what we do.”
So instead of walking back to a shattered locker room with his head down after an agonizing exit, Painter could savor the moment with his players on the court. Edey was in such a hurry to embrace his coach, he ran up and grabbed Painter just as he was about to shake Barnes’ hand. The Tennessee coach had to wait. “When that Mack truck comes at you what are you going to do?” Painter said of his center. “(Barnes) was very gracious to be able to give us that moment. He’s a class guy,”
It was an alternate universe from Fairleigh Dickinson only 12 months before. One of the first things Painter did after the game was find Gene Keady. “He should have been able to experience this because he deserved it,” Painter said. “And you feel a little bit of guilt right?”
But it would be hard to find anyone who does not believe Matt Painter finally deserved this moment.
“You get a lot of different people coming at you, and you’ve got to be strong in your convictions,” he said of the past. “I think we were strong in our convictions in terms of how we play and how we do things.”
And he has the most distinctive weapon in college basketball to help forget the dark days.
“I get to pay him back,” Edey said, “Like there were so many coaches that looked over me. I could name a coach that looked over me. Tennessee. Rick Barnes is a great coach, but he was at our practice, looked over me. It’s kind of been the story of my life. People have doubted me. People looked past me. Can’t do that anymore.”
Can’t say Matt Painter hasn’t been to the Final Four anymore, either. The man with the net tied to the back of his hat Sunday afternoon really liked that. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here,” Painter said of his old coach. “He’s a special guy in my life,” Keady said of the former student who has just gone where he never could.
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