The Worst Loss Of Painter’s Tenure

Cutting the lead from 14 to 4 in about 5 mins right off the half cannot just be explained by “a couple 3 off their missed shots”. We also cut the TO to only 3 in the 2nd half (from 7).

Sure, it wasn’t nearly enough, but I won’t blame it on half-time adjustment. It’s more like we just thought it’ll be an easy win and all we need is to show up.

Look at IU, totally different attitude with a good center. I think it’s funny how people say they’re a young team. It’s all the same besides Zeller at C.

Once we get good inside presence we will be fine…too bad that this won’t happen until two years from now. We have no reliability on the inside at all, that’s why you see teams adjust to our deficiencies.

In games like these, the guys simply look like they don’t know how to play together. They don’t know who to set picks or screens for. They don’t know how to help each other on defense. They look like they just met and are playing a pick up game at the co-rec

I’d just use the coach’s favorite adage: focus on the next game.

One game at a time. As long as we do that, everything will be taken care of.

another desperation 3 by Mich hits the rim

IU gonna get another W.

I don’t care much as long as we beat them when we face them.

Coaching: D
Rob: B
Ryne: F
Kelsey: B
Lew: B
Jacob: D
Sandi: F
Travis: F
TJ: F
AJ: D
DJ: B
John: B

It’s going to be difficult to win on the road guys, especially when the home team shoots lights out. W/O Jackson dribble drive penetration-we got nothing! Smith is not a starting 2 guard. Great off the bench but in way is he a starting big ten shooting guard. We need 15-20 from a Purdue starting 2 guard. We are so guard heavy, it’s gotta be the star position on this team.

And IU also just got a 2013 commit from another big from Wisconsin, so I’m not sure if IU will keep going after Willis as hard. Although, I’m still not confident about getting him out of the state of Kentucky.

As for recruits seeing guys that they want to play with, since we’re done recruiting for the 2012 class and almost done with the 2013 class, wouldn’t the 2014 recruits we’re going after get a better idea of who they’d play with at Purdue by looking at our 7 committed players? I think a lot of players would be excited to join those 7.

In terms of who’ll have a worse season, I say Purdue, just b/c we are a lot more vulnerable (the 5-spot, 1-spot, and Hummel’s knee).

In terms of which loss is worse, I say Wisky. In the B1G, a road loss can be acceptable. A home loss against a worse team is not.

It’s really pretty simple, and that’s why I can’t believe Painter doesn’t adjust. Same story as VCU, we keep trying to pressure a very fast point guard with full court m2m. What happens is they either get past at around half court and someone has to help or they get into the lane, or whoever is picking up full court is so gassed that when the high pick comes the help hedge has to push out too high and too long before the guard gets back into position and then a pass or two finds an incredibly open player.

Especially with Lew looking injured, this is a dumb strategy against a guard like Frazier. Adjust your system to the reality that you can’t stay in front of a guy unless you back off a bit. Or trap him on the inbound. Whatever. Just don’t keep doing the same full court m2m on the point. It’s stupid in that context. Painter needs to take an econ 101 course at Purdue. The costs of making our point pressure full court by himself are outweighing the benefits.

the last point is key. know your limitations. With some guards it is stupid to pick up full court with just one guy. Either trap or have Lew pick up at half court or at the 3 line so he can stay in front.

1. If we lose by 20, it isn’t like putting in Hale will make the difference.
2. Hale is not a low-post guy, just like TC is not really a low-post guy either.
3. There is no point to “find out” whether Hale can play this year. It isn’t like we can trade him away as in the pros. Like it or not, he’s with us for the next 4 yrs (after a year of prep and a year of red-shirt it’s inhumane to get rid of him).
4. Hit a hook in the lane is not a given, just like TJ cannot hit a FT even when no one is guarding him.
5. Absolutely agree that LewJack doesn’t attack the middle nor Robbie to distribute. This is failure on the coach.
6. This is debatable. I understand your argument of letting Frazier (or Craft, or Rondo) to shoot jumpers instead of guarding him man-to-man full-court. I think that’s a fair argument. Now, from what I know about Painter’s philosophy, he doesn’t believe in adjusting to opponents. He may do so if we are playing against O$U and you just HAVE TO adjust for Sullinger. But for the most part, he doesn’t believe in changing what his team does. His argument is, if you just do your thing VERY well, the other team has to adjust to you, not you adjust to them. For when you adjust, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage b/c you are running sth less familiar. Better stick to what you do best (which in our case is m2m).

I dunno what’s right. I’d think adjustment is needed as you say, but then John Wooden also shares a similar view as Painter, and it’s difficult for me to go against the best coach ever. In a way, if you are the better team, you shouldn’t be adjusting but impose your strength on others for them to adjust to you. Apparently the problem is, we weren’t the better team last night.

…you kind of have to expect it when playing on the road. Painter always preaches that you have to be 10-15 pts better to secure a win on the road. I absolutely think some offensive foul calls on us are insane, but then that’s just life on the road (and ref in the B1G).

No shots would fall, with good or bad looks.

Usually when jumpers aren’t falling, you have to try to get easy layups or will yourself to the line. (Problem is, we are a terrible shooting team)

As for it being a cold and quiet gym, true, but I dunno what’s worse: is it easier to play there, or to play at an arena like Mackey as a visiting team where it is loud and crazy?

As CMP says, we become fat and sassy.

The team wasn’t ready to play last night. I don’t know how much of that is on the coaches versus the seniors, but we looked like we just expected the W. Couple that with the fact that we have been a different team all year away from Mackey. Then add a quick 3rd year starting point guard who we tried to rattle by attempting to play lock down D on, but he just blew by us. Plus another player not known to hit threes unloading from the perimeter on us and you get what we had last night. Time to change the sheets because we really crapped the bed.

The road win over Iowa looks better after the last week and we took care of Illinois. Penn State was just one game so I’m not going to panic just yet.

and as I pointed out above – the key decision is to keep the full court single man press on Frazier. Every time a point is quick enough to get past our guy, or wiley enough to use high picks to cause mismatches, we lose. Simple. I hate that part of Painters system more than anything. It only works against mediocre point guards, and against good ones it not only leads to defensive breakdowns, but is absolutely killing LewJack.

At least we played well for 30 minutes during those games…this one we didn’t show up at all.

I completely disagree. Matt Painter is THE BEST COACH for Purdue. Had Painter left last year for Mizzou, would Burke have gone out and hired a coach of the same caliber? Definitely not, we would have gotten someone ala Danny Hope and we all know how well that’s working out….

You cite that “his teams have never been good at the line…”, yet the past 2 years we were amongst the highest FT% teams in the B1G.

“Recruting is mediocre…” Other than the big time schools like Duke, UK, KU, and UNC (starting to be OSU unfortunately) how many schools consistently have top 10 recruiting classes? We have to remember where the program was when Coach Keady left and where MP has brought the program since then. As long as the program continues to grow, Purdue will eventually become one of the big time recruting schools. But recruiting success doesn’t grow overnight.

Ultimately like I said in a previous post, this team just isn’t that good and fans need to have realistic expectations. Every team unless you’re the big name schools has success in cycles. Purdue had a great run with Robbie, E’Twaun, and JJ. But that run came to an end last year. What could have been with a healthy Robbie we’ll never know. Now it’s time to look ahead and the prospects of another great couple of years of recruits coming in, leading to another potential run to the Final 4. That’s all we can ask for as fans.

We were ranked top 5 in the nation and almost a sure bet for a #1 seed prior to “that game” in Minnesota. Does that not qualify as national success?

And if we go all the way back to the Iowa game we will see our motion offense force them to drop their zone in a matter of about 5 possesions.

You literally focused on every bad thing that had happened since Matt Painter has been coach and ignored everything else. You are either the most pessimistic Purdue fan in the world or your Hoosier side is shining through.

Really? You were run off this site? I got murdered a million times and I am still surviving. So welcome back to life.

That said, I wholeheartedly disagree. Painter may be a little bit overpaid, but for once Burke willing to pay up we might as well take it. I dunno what alternative out there that’s undoubtedly better. I think it’s easy to say “Fire Painter” or “Fire Burke.” But unless you can get someone who’s better, unless you have a solution, just crying out the existing is not perfect doesn’t help at all.

His successes with JJ, Etwan, Hummel was less great coaching than those players pure will to win

I also wholeheartedly disagree. It’s difficult to tell how much the winning is on the coach and how much is on the player. Is it MJ’s greatness or Phil Jackson’s genius that lead to six championships? I don’t think you can single out one and ignore the other. Our recent success has a lot to do with the players, but I am sure CMP plays a part too and you can’t just dismiss that just like you can’t dismiss Phil Jackson as “just b/c he has MJ and Kobe”. (I mean, Mike Brown also has Lebron, but he didn’t win any championship.)

Coach better force them to practice for hours. If you think about it, there are sveral teams that always have good team % year in year out.

That’s b.s. Find me a good team that has good % year-in and year-out. Add Shaq to that team and see if they can still be good year-in and year-out. Also, there are A LOT more than FTs. Sure, we can have the player do absolutely nothing but shoot FTs all day, but then we won’t have the time to work on other areas like rebounding or team defense. It’s naive to think that you can just “force” the player to shoot FT and they’ll magically be a great FT shooting team. If it’s so easy all the NBA teams should be shooting at least 80% given those professional players have 24/7 to practice and no final exams.

We don’t practice zone therefore we never get practice playing offense against it. We are gimping ourselves twice by refusing versatility.

Not to defend Painter b/c we did suck last night playing against the zone (and in general). But if I recall correctly O$U was playing a zone at Mackey (Robbie’s junior year where he nailed 8 threes in the first half) and b/c of Robbie they switched to m2m (and stole that game).

Obviously one example is not enough to counter the many that we failed. I would say though, last night’s problem is more of our lack of intensity and in Painter’s words, “fat and sassy” and expect an easy win just by showing up. Look, we may not be able to attack the zone, but at least we shouldn’t make their #35 looking like Larry Bird making all the threes. After all, we pride ourselves in our defense, and to let PSU tear us apart like that is more inexcusable than failure to attack a zone.

I don’t think we are lacking basic fundamental skills, but D1 basketball talent. Our only two players (Hummel and Jackson) that could start on another BIG10 team are banged up and don’t practice on a regular basis.

The motion offense has nothing to do with our lack of rebounding. Our line-up of 3 to 4 smaller guards plus the physcial abilities (or inabilities) of Carrol and Lawson is why we can’t rebound. Our only player that can rebound (Hummel) plays on the perimeter which keeps him out of position for offensive rebounds.

In Painters motion offense and defensive strategy, he really needs taller, athletic guards and one legit post player to be a strong rebounding team. It’s looking like we are moving that direction with Davis, Stephens, Smotherman, and Hammons but that’s still a few years away until they are effective.

Every time we lose a game someone will bring up Hale. Hale is not the answer. We lose NOT b/c of Hale. Hale is not gonna save the game if we don’t show up with the right mindset to play. We lose by 20, and I doubt Hale will score more than 5 even if he plays.

The motivation is not really to “save” Hale for his senior year, but more so that he is just not gonna see the floor much. It’s like Ryne Smith’s freshman year. We didn’t redshirt him, and he basically has a wasted year, and we could have used him next year if he’s available, even if just as a backup specialist. The same can be said with Brian Cardinal but in the opposite direction, where b/c of his redshirt he got to play as a fifth year senior and leading the team within a game to the Final Four.

I am not advocating red-shirt, but I trust CMP know better than us mere mortals with his $2.3M. If he knows a guy is not gonna play much (if at all), he is gonna have to make the difficult but correct decision to red-shirt him. And listen to the doubters who will second-guess him any time the team loses a game.

Our ability to crush a 2-3 zone is to hit our open 3-pt shots or to increase the tempo of the game so the defense has problems setting up the zone. Purdue scores in three ways (1) in transisition, (2) open 3-pt shots, and (3) driving to the basket and finishing or dishing to an open player caused by defensive help. The 2-3 zone takes away the drive (#3), especially since our players that can drive are extremely undersized (Jackson, AJ, TJ, & Barlow). Without anything that resembles a post presence, no mid-range game (excluding Hummel), and lack of size on guards that can penetrate we don’t have the talent to use other traditional offensive setups to beat the 2-3.

Another problem we have is our best three shooters (Hummel, Smith and Byrd) to break a zone are also our bigger defensive liabilities because of lateral quickness and/or lack of size. This was evident in our loss to Penn State. You know when we have to play Hummel at the #5 and 6’4" Byrd at the #4 for long periods of time, we are in serious trouble.

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