Here's What Coach Matt Painter Said After No. 6 Purdue's Win Over No. 16 Ohio State
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — After going up by as many as 20 points against No. 16 Ohio State, the No. 6-ranked Purdue basketball team nearly let one slip away inside Mackey Arena on Sunday afternoon.
But in the final seconds of the game, sophomore guard Jaden Ivey made an improvised play to win the game with a 3-point shot, and the Boilermakers escaped with an 81-78 victory.
Purdue coach Matt Painter took to the podium after the game to talk to the media. Here's a transcript of everything he had to say, including video of the full postgame press conference:
Q: Players described the final play not going the way that you had drawn up. What were you trying to do in that situation?
Painter: We were just running a simple play, whether it was man or zone, the same thing just to get the ball inside to Zach (Edey). So it was kind of like Planes; Trains and Automobiles. John Candy was making fun of the other guy, because how do you know which way I'm going? He says you're going the wrong way. We just went the wrong way. Then two people are there to get the basketball, and then Eric (Hunter Jr.) was stuck. Because what's he supposed to do at that time?
He actually did a really good job, because a lot of times guys will break it, and then they'll just try to go and score. Well the last thing you want to do is now give them a chance to go to the other hand. So now this has happened, and we have no timeouts. So even if we don't make that, at least we go and play overtime and try to win.
He goes and shoots that early, now they go in transition — you know they're making it. They've made everything for the past 20 minutes. And so I thought Eric did a good job just to be able to get us into overtime. Obviously, we make the shot, you don't go into overtime. We've got to concentrate a little bit better than that.
Q: You didn't flinch when he made the shot, how is that?
Painter: What I try to get them to do is do their job, do what you're supposed to, play as hard as you can and live with the results when you do those things. But when you don't do some of those things, then it just eats at you.
So that's why I didn't flinch, because we didn't do what we were supposed to do, and normally the basketball gods are not with you at that time. We were very lucky that they were with us, because Ohio State was great in the last four or five minutes of the game.
Q: How important is someone like Mason Gillis and his contributions?
Painter: Just a hard charger. Just plays hard, competes, gets on the offensive glass, gives you everything. You can't have enough of that, he's got a lot of substance as a player. He had that 3 to start the second half where they just kind of forgot about him, he just missed it. Then he comes back and hits the next 3. He has that free-throw line jumper when they're just overdoing things, it's a really good shot.
So just trying to encourage him to take his open shots, but just rebound the basketball. He gets his hands on a lot of balls, doesn't always get them. Tonight, I thought he was great going with two hands. You know, he's got to reward himself for how hard he plays by getting basketballs with two hands.
But when you think about the plays that are made, Eric Hunter's 3 was huge late in the game, but his plays to give us extra possessions were huge, also.
Q: You're up 11 points with 2:30 to go, was that just Ohio State taking it away? Or was it anything Purdue needed to do better to hold on?
Painter: Both. You're always going to have it from your perspective. We foul a 3-point shot. We're up six, and we absolutely say stay with your man unless he's just not a 3-point shooter. Their worst 3-point shooter that was out there is a guy that's already hit two 3s in Eugene Brown III, so you're going to stay with him too. So you're just staying with them.
It's all we talked about in the huddle because I took the timeout. So they're able to set something out, but they have a timeout they can use. I didn't want to risk what happened, and it still happens. So we just said, hey, we're staying with our guys. Even when it gets kind of away on the weak side, just stay with your guy. They score a basket here and it stays at two possessions. That's what we want, we don't want this at one possession. And then we obviously didn't do that.
But we mistakes, and they made tough shots. You've got to be able to stay with some guys. And obviously we turn the ball over late against the press and they make a huge shot there. We actually react pretty well to it to go pick up, and E.J. Liddell makes a really, really tough 3.
Q: What did Purdue do to kind of speed up the game when Ohio State was trying to slow down?
Painter: I don't think we sped it up as much as we just were efficient. I think you can score more points and you don't have to go faster. You look at our second-chance points. That's probably more of a difference, 18-11. And fastbreak points being 14-12. They scored off of our turnovers more, even though we only have 10 but they had six. They won that battle.
But just trying to get your guys to understand about taking what they're giving them. I felt we had an advantage inside. If we move the basketball and then play off of that, then knock down some shots.
Our Achilles right now is our free-throw shooting more than anything. But the one thing that you've got to keep in perspective as a coach is that no one's trying to miss a free throw. Like when you break down defensively and you don't do your job, you got to be better. But guys aren't trying to miss their free throws, but we're doing a lot of positive things that we're not rewarding ourselves.
If you start the game, and you just get your bigs in foul trouble, and then we make our free throws, and we just start to push the lead and get going. It's hard, but they're fouling and getting in foul trouble, but we're not making our free throws. It allows them to kind of hang and understand, hey, if if you got them, take your fouls. Those guys aren't gonna make them. But I know those guys both have been working really hard on their free throws, but we've just got to keep working.
We've just got to keep getting better, but we can't lose sight that we're doing good things. I know it doesn't seem that way when you don't make your free throws. But we're doing positive things to get to the free-throw line.
Q: Some games Purdue shoots particularly well from the free-throw line, others not as much. Is there anything you see from their mental approach?
Painter: Well I don't think you can give an answer in theory about 10 different people shooting free throws, because each one's different. Zack has to just stay under the basketball, he lets the ball slide off the side of his hands. It's why you see a lot of his hit the front of the rim, hit the back. That should naturally roll in, it shouldn't roll to the side. His rolls to the side and kind of hangs on that lip of the rim, and then it goes off. That's the way he misses a lot. He's got to do a better job of just staying under the basketball.
Trevion has just got to get himself into a rhythm. He's got to stick with his routine, be detailed with his routine. I thought a little bit of Jaden's other night when he was 2-for-7 was just missing a game, coming back, and then he got frustrated.
It's a very frustrating thing because everybody out there says well I can make free throws. Yeah, well, what's your percentage with 15,000 people in the stands? And it's like, okay, you've never played, so it doesn't matter. You work on them. You try to put competitive free throws, put them in different situations in practice.
When you get up there and you're thinking hitting and missing, you're gonna miss. You've got to get up and think your routine and do your steps and your process, and then trust the process. But we'll keep working on it.
Q: There's been a common theme of letting leads slide in the second half this season. Is that effort?
Painter: I don't think it's schematic, I think it's more concentration. We lack concentration when we get up. I told our guys afterwards, it's like they're holding on, is the best way I can put it. Like we get leads in the first half, and we get overzealous. Tonight, we didn't do that. We didn't start taking bad shots or guys throwing behind the back passes or just kind of lose your mind.
We had two turnovers at halftime, which was fabulous. Then in the second half, we really played well in a stretch and that second half. We did some really, really good things. But when we get leads — and this happens to a lot of people, I don't think you stand alone here — from a human behavior standpoint and competition, when somebody gets a lead, you're like, why is this team always relaxed as much as the other team putting their foot on the gas and take off? Well, it's a give and take. It's easier to make shots up 18, down 18, right? The game's kind of a little bit out of out of the way. But it's not, people come back people have those runs.
It's just concentrated effort. You've got to keep doing your job. You can't have breakdowns, and we just don't do that. You think about subbing and doing different things at that time, but you also want to keep your best guys in there when it matters the most. But we have struggled in that area.
It's a very honest thing that you've said because it does happen. But I think it happens to more people, it doesn't make it right. We've just got to concentrate and do our job. We lose our focus and do silly things and let them steal points.
Q: How do you convey to the players that the other team isn't going to go away in the second half?
Painter: Nobody in our league is going to do that. No one's gonna, they're gonna keep going. Everybody invests a lot of time — coaches, players, administrators, fans. You put in a lot of time, but when you deal with talent and you deal with good teams, good programs like they have, it just goes without saying.
Like I said, once again, it's a little bit of a byproduct of youth. Now it's like, when it's at 17, like oh we've got this. In reality, obviously, you don't. We've been a part of a lot of experiences, but they haven't been a part of a lot of experiences. So now that I've talked about it a lot lately, you become kind of their parent, in terms of how they listen to you. Like everybody kind of ignores their own parents at times, and you think they're full of it, when actually they're not. But the coach is kind of in that role, and you're sitting there talking.
And the other thing that happens through competition is just your fatigue factor in the huddle. Like have you've ever played before and walked out of a huddle and then said, "OK, what are we doing?" Well that dude just talked for two minutes, what do you mean what are we doing? But there's not a person who's ever played that hasn't done that. Because you're fatigued, you're worn out. You've got to be able to concentrate when you're tired. You've got to be able to do your job you're tired.
We have a pretty deep team, but at the end of the game there, we just had so many breakdowns. It's just through fatigue, through competition, but you've got to concentrate into it you're supposed to.
Q: How important is learning from this game moving forward and being more efficient offensively as well?
Painter: No question. We had some good moments there, we had some shots. We had an open 3, we have a post up, we have a free-throw line jumper. So we got some OK shots in there, but then we have a couple of empty possessions like you're talking about where it's like, what are we doing?
But we had that against Iowa the other night. When we got up, we have three or four possessions that end up being empty. And it's just the focus. And sometimes when you're struggling in certain areas, well if you're good from an offensive efficiency standpoint, like we are, run good offense. Get quality shots, get to the free-throw line, get layups, get wide-open 3s. Now you have a better chance of setting your defense with that. We focused on that all year, in terms of when we're struggling in other areas, let's be even better in the areas that we're having success with.
Q: How would you describe the player Zach Edey has become in such a short amount of time here?
Painter: Well, he's an outlier. There's nobody else out there like him. There might be some people of that size, but they don't have the skill that he has, in terms of his ability to make shots around the rim. It's a really tough matchup for people, but he averaged four points two years ago in high school. Like Jaden Ivey's a really talented player — he averaged 12 his senior in high school.
So these guys are young players still learning. But Zack, he's a matchup nightmare for people. And he's worked really hard defensively to try to stay on the court as much as he can. They were really trying to stretch us, especially when Kyle Young's at the five. You know, that's hard for him, even though I thought he had a couple of really good contests with it.
He's a joy to coach. Comes early, stays late. He works on his game a lot, takes in things, watches extra film. He's always wanting to get better, stuff like that. If you can have a lot of guys like that, that gets contagious and that's a good thing.
Q: What goes into the decision to keep Jaden Ivey on the bench for the second straight game, and what opportunities does that give other players?
Painter: Nothing really, when something kind of gets created organically, sometimes I stay with it. Sometimes I don't. He practices one day before we play Iowa, and then we barely practice these next two days. If you're injured so much when you can't play in a game, like Sasha had last year with COVID. He was probably mad at me, but he plays 14 minutes, plays like 20 minutes plays like 27 minutes — I'm probably off a little bit here. Then I start him after that.
If you're gonna miss a game or you have to miss a game. It just doesn't always click like that right away. But I just tried to gauge it, I don't have like a magic answer for that. But I know when somebody plays well that is used to starting who didn't start. Now, we've gotten some pretty productive minutes from him. Isaiah (Thompson) was pretty good against Iowa in that game.
Now obviously, (Jaden's) a great player, one of the best players in the country. So we just got to figure out a way going forward how we're gonna handle that. You can just put it in the suggestion box, I'll read it. I don't get caught up with that. You see a lot of people kind of grab the narrative Zack and Trevion. To me, it's not that big a deal. It just isn't. But you just try to make a decision on what you think is best for your team to win. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, but you use your own experiences and the things that you've been through to try to do that. And it doesn't make a lot of people happy through that. But if you want people to be happy, you shouldn't be coaching. You're never winning that battle. So just do what's best for your team.
Q: What's the difference between Eric Hunter Jr. now versus a few months ago?
Painter: I think he's playing with more confidence. I think probably it was hard for him coming off the bench after he started. He's done some really good things. I thought he had good energy, made some shots, made some plays, was getting to the basket. He missed that one, but it was a good drive, it was a good decision. He got stuck a couple times and then reverse pivoted and got a post feed that ended up being a foul.
He's got a good pulse to him right now. And then from a defensive standpoint, I thought he took some challenges on guarding those guys. He's been very productive here in the past four or five games.
Q: Were there better defensive structures in the half court for you before their big run?
Painter: Yes. We actually did some good things for most of the game until the end. And then we just had so many breakdowns at the end of the game. Like I said, I thought we were just kind of holding on. But I thought our guys did some good things on the defensive end. I mean, it kind of shows you how good E.J. Liddell is.
I thought we did a good job on him and he gets 20. It shows you the quality of play. He reminds me a lot of Carl Landry, he's a little more mobile, but I think he's gonna have a long NBA career. It's my opinion, but I'm pretty sure. Anybody that can shoot that's got that kind of frame that can move that way. Those guys are tough matchups.
Stories Related to Purdue Basketball
- JADEN IVEY HITS IMPROVISED 3-POINTER FOR PURDUE: In a tie game with No. 16 Ohio State at Mackey Arena, the final shot of the game for Purdue was supposed to go to Zach Edey. But when Jaden Ivey botched the play, the star sophomore made up for it by taking the go-ahead attempt to lift the No. 6-ranked Boilermakers to an 81-78 win. CLICK HERE
- PURDUE STAVES OFF OHIO STATE COMEBACK: Purdue sophomore guard Jaden Ivey hit a three-pointer in the final second as the No. 6 Boilermakers held off a rally from No. 16 Ohio State, winning 81–78. The Boilermakers let a 20-point second half lead slip away before Ivey's heroics. CLICK HERE
- PAINTER 2ND IN CAREER WINS AT PURDUE: Purdue’s Matt Painter, in his 17th season with the program, earned his 372nd victory as a Big Ten coach in an 83–73 win over Iowa on the road Thursday. He now ranks second in the program's career wins list and fifth all-time among Big Ten coaches. CLICK HERE
Become Part of the Boilermakers Country Community!
- Follow D.J. Fezler on Twitter: @DJFezler
- Follow Boilermakers Country on Twitter: @sports_purdue
- Like and follow Boilermakers Country on Facebook
D.J. Fezler is a staff writer for BoilermakersCountry.com. Hailing from The Region, he is from Cedar Lake in Northwest Indiana and has spent the last two years covering Purdue football and basketball.