As his team made its way through their tough non-conference schedule in November and December, Purdue head coach Matt Painter knew that life without big man Zach Edey would pose some challenges in their quest to make a return trip to the NCAA Final Four this April. Most notably, the Boilermakers’ biggest issues early on in 2024-25 were rebounding, defense, and caring for the basketball on the offensive end.
In their four losses this season, Purdue has been out-rebounded 33.3 to 29, and they have committed almost 17 turnovers per game and forced only 12.2.
Conversely, those numbers are much different during their current seven-game winning streak. While holding a slight edge in rebounding over their last seven opponents (33.7-32.7), the Boilers committed turnovers at a far lesser rate, only coughing up nine per game over their current hot streak.
Defensively, Purdue has not given up more than 68 points during their recent successful stretch.
After their latest triumph over the Oregon Ducks in Eugene on Saturday, Painter met with the press to expound on his team’s progress.
Painter attributes Purdue’s recent uptick on the glass as a team effort, not just relying on the big men to get the job done.
After Saturday’s game, Painter said:
“Yeah, staying around the basketball, getting our guards in there. Sometimes it can get inverted when you have matchups. Sometimes you stop them and you switch and you do different things, but then you have the mismatch on the glass and that’s hard, that’s really hard when you’ve got size against little people on the glass.
“There’s some risk involved to what you do, but I thought our effort was great. I thought guys really swarmed the basketball on the glass.”
Painter referenced almost everyone when describing his approval of his team’s cohesive defensive performance:
“Trying to be connected. It’s hard to go and play two games and then have somebody of the caliber of Oregon, who runs a lot of really good stuff. But, I thought our young guys — Myles (Colvin), Gicarri (Harris), CJ (Cox) — did a really, really good job. Fletcher (Loyer) and Braden had very active hands, understood what’s going on, knew their positioning. Cam (Heide) and Caleb (Furst) and Trey (Kaufman-Renn) and Raleigh (Burgess), just across the line I thought we were connected tonight.
“When things didn’t go our way, we didn’t get frustrated, we just kept guarding and trying to rebound and just be around the basketball.”
Playing as one matters in all team sports; especially in a sport where each of the five players on the floor depends on each other, all need to be in step with each other to maintain success.
Painter praised his guys on that concept, citing how well that togetherness has made Purdue much more structured lately:
“I thought a couple of plays in the first half, we just got whipped on the dribble. Those are easy ones, you just can’t have those. We diminished those, we did a better job blowing them up. We’ve tried our best to not allow people to get into the paint setting ball screens, when they’re posting up or transition.
“We kind of go back-and-forth on things, but whatever we do, guys have been really good sticking to a game plan and fighting. You have your foundation defensively, so you have your core principles and you have specifics of things that can change in a scouting report. I’m not a huge change guy. I change a little bit here and there, but sometimes you have to be that way. I think a lot of people want to do that.
“If you change all the time and you have athletes, you can get away with it. But then you lose your foundation, your core principles that you want on defense. I don’t like doing that, I like building on those and growing with it.
“I thought our guys were great, I thought they did a good job. We had a couple breakdowns here and there, but for the most part we stayed with it and I thought we had great effort. I thought our guys stayed with it and really played hard.”
Watch all of Painter’s post-game presser following the Oregon game here:
The 15-4 Purdue Boilermakers jump right back into Big 10 play on Tuesday when they welcome the Ohio State Buckeyes to Mackey Arena. The game begins a three-game stretch at home, and tip time is set for 7:30 ET.
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