Purdue basketball coach Matt Painter's name is turning up on all sorts of Coach of the Year lists these days, and only the most severe case of Boilermaker animus would say that's not right.
Well, that is right. It's all kinds of right.
This is not just because Painter has taken a team that began the season wholly dependent on holdover star Carsen Edwards, and turned it into a smoothly humming machine with multiple working parts functioning in seamless concert. It's also because of what he did yesterday, on Senior Day in Mackey Arena, after the Boilers destroyed Ohio State by 35 to vault to the top of the Big Ten with a 15-3 record, a 22-7 overall record and 13 wins in their last 14 games.
What Painter did was, he decided to coach up not just the players but the student body.
What he did was tell them to retire the "IU sucks" chant that erupts from the student section -- aka, the Paint Crew -- every time the rival Hoosiers visit Mackey. We're better than that, Painter told them. You're better than that. So stop it.
No doubt this was in response to what happened in Bloomington a couple weeks ago, when the IU student section repeatedly serenaded Purdue center Matt Haarms with "F*** you, Haarms." Had Bob Knight still been coach at IU, he'd have grabbed the courtside mic and told them (in his own inimitable way) to knock that s*** off. Archie Miller, alas, did not do that, although he did speak to it in the postgame.
Not so Painter.
Guess that makes him 3-0 vs. IU this season.
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