Matt Painter Previews Purdue's NCAA Tournament Game Against Fairleigh Dickinson

Coach Matt Painter met with the media on Thursday ahead of Purdue's NCAA Tournament matchup against Fairleigh Dickinson. Here's the complete transcript of his press conference.

D.J. Fezler | Mar 16, 2023

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — No. 1 seed Purdue basketball tips off against No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson in the first round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament on Friday at Nationwide Arena.

Boilermakers coach Matt Painter met with the media Thursday to preview the matchup and give initial impressions on the Knights. The two teams are scheduled to play at 6:50 p.m. ET, and the game will be televised on TNT.

Here's the complete transcript of his press conference:

Opening statement

MATT PAINTER: Like everyone else, we're excited to be in the NCAA Tournament. Our guys have worked very hard to be in a great position, but just really looking forward to the challenge of playing Fairleigh Dickinson, who had a great win last night. Did some really good things.

Really like their backcourt, their quickness, their skill, their ability to drive the basketball and just their overall aggressiveness. They have interchangeable pieces, they're tough to go against with their athleticism and their length.

And we'll have to do a good job of taking care of the basketball on the offensive end and be able to contain them while also guarding the 3-point line. They hit seven 3s in the first half which was a big difference going into halftime. Made a couple more after that.

But just really, really impressed with Fairleigh Dickinson. Have a really good coach. You can see they're connected on both ends of the floor. And just looking forward to that challenge.

Q. I know in a coaching career, there are ups and there are downs. And when there are downs, and if they last for more than a game or two, what does it take as a coach to stick to what you believe in, your core, and not deviate from it? Obviously, you have to change schemes and things like that, but what does it take to stick to things you believe in when things are tough?

PAINTER: Your own personal convictions about how a game should be played or how a program should be run has nothing to do with an opponent, has nothing to do with the style of anything of that nature.

We change a lot on our personnel. So last time we made a really deep run to the Elite Eight, we had made and took the most 3-pointers in the history of the Big Ten and we didn't have a low post guy.

You guys always say, we always have a low post guy, which isn't true but it's close.

And we say it in recruiting if you become one of the top two or three scorers, we'll circle the wagons around you. If you don't, then you're going to be one of the guys that we circle with. And you'll be one of those guys that we play off of those guys. But everybody's a rebounder, everybody's a defender. And that's how you win.

What you're leaning towards is just winning ways. You can't have enough people on your staff. You can't have enough players on your team that are about winning. And sometimes that takes a little bit of time to gel and to have that collaboration from everybody that understands what that's about because a lot of kids want to play a certain role.

And that's hard. That's a real hard sell to get everybody to do that.

But if you have really good assistants that understand about evaluating, the things that you get upset about you should be thinking about in recruiting. That's why we've done a much better job here the last seven, eight years because we focused more on productivity than we have talent.

Sure you've got to have the ability to play at this level, but how productive you are is so important. And do you fit at your institution? At Purdue, you've got to want to come to Purdue to get an education. You have to come to want to win a championship and sacrifice. And just trying to stay there.

Sometimes coaches -- and I'm one of them that has done this -- you get blinded by your lack of talent in a certain area, so you just rush to that certain area and fill the void. And while you're doing that you're messing with your chemistry. You're messing with your culture.

And those need to be at the forefront of your decision. It gets difficult sometimes when you strike out on people, especially big guys. So we don't draft. We have to recruit. A lot of times who we want, sometimes you can't get.

But if you can get those guys, it's great. But if you can't, how do you maneuver when you absolutely have to have size?

You get stuck and you have one big guy and he fouls out, how do you play the game? It's really hard to, right? You have to have depth and you have to do things. So there's a little bit of downside in how you collect your team because once again we don't draft.

Q. Obviously Zach is used to being the tallest guy on the court. What are the challenges, particularly in this game, with Ansley Almonor, who is obviously more of a perimeter guy, what are his challenges to try to -- obviously he lives in the paint, essentially Zach does. Could you speak to that?

PAINTER: He won't guard Almonor. We'll cross matchup and he'll guard the other guy. I'm not giving up any secrets. Anybody that has a face-up five like that, we get Zach on the other guy and he guards him. We've done that all year. We've done that ever since Zach got here.

But Almonor is a great player. That's what you normally make changes for. You make changes because someone's a great player. And he hit five -- I think it was five 3s in the game the other day. He can really stretch it but he can also drive the basketball.

In our last game, Zach guarded their backup point guard for about four or five possessions. It looks funny, a 7'4" guy guarding a 6-foot guy out there. But it's the lesser of all evils. Normally in those situations when you have a big that can stretch the defense, we put him on the guy. That doesn't mean that guy can't expose him. We just find the guy that doesn't shoot as well from the perimeter.

With those guys, they have a lot of guys that can shoot. You go to the lesser of all evils and that guy can still shoot. You've still got to guard them and play them. But we have a lot of experience of doing this. It doesn't mean that we can't be duped, but we do have a lot of experience.

Q. What do you feel like the returning kids learned from the Saint Peter's game last year in this tournament?

PAINTER: That Saint Peter's played harder than we did. That's what they learned. I thought Shaheen Holloway did a better job than I did. I thought they played harder, I thought they were tougher and quicker to the basketball.

Normally when you get in a tournament or any game if the talent is pretty equal that team is going to win. Saint Peter's deserved to win.

Q. You've been around this for 30-plus years as a player and coach. How much, on a day like today, do you still allow yourself to feel the joy and excitement that comes with being a part of it?

PAINTER: Everybody will text you that or tell you that. And it's a little hard to do when you're involved with it. But you've got to take a step back and just appreciate what our guys have done for our program and what they've sacrificed and how cool it is just to coach in an NCAA Tournament game and to be in this position.

But just like anything, you've got to go out and compete and you've got to have a good fight to you. That's really what your focus is, trying to get your players on edge. You've got to work harder than the other team but you've also got to work smarter.

Q. I think you probably would have been in about fourth or fifth grade when the 1980 team made its run. What memories if any do you have from that? And now to what extent do you try and educate your guys about the history there and what it means to them knowing that this is a team that potentially has the chance to make that kind of run as well?

PAINTER: My whole family went to Indiana, so I was an Indiana fan at the time. That changed, obviously, when I was 18. I just remember Indiana getting beat in Lexington by Purdue. I think they played Duke, I think, or vice versa. I don't recall the chronological order there.

I know Purdue played a game at Mackey Arena just like Indiana won their last two games in Assembly Hall. Things have changed. You don't play on home courts anymore.

The thing I remember is just Joe Barry Carroll more than anything, how dominant he was. I told him one of his teammates, a guy last year after the season was over, I said if I played Zach Edey 30 minutes he'd have numbers like Joe Barry Carroll.

He laughed at me, said I was crazy. He called me the other day and said, he has numbers like Joe Barry Carroll actually a little better.

That's what I remember. And obviously getting a special run like they had like anybody has that thing that's what you want to be able to do -- play your best basketball at this time of the year.

Q. How is Zach handling the 30 games or whatever it's been of being the guy that everybody's hitting on? Just physically and mentally, how is he? The wear and tear doesn't seem to be affecting him but you tell me.

PAINTER: I think he's all right. I think it's a better question for him. But I think he does a good job. The thing that's interesting is players lie to you when they come to the huddle. You'll try to ask them a question about getting fouled. What happened there, did you get fouled? I got creamed. I got smoked. I got hit.

You go back and watch film and they don't get touched. Because every player's that way. I don't know a good player doesn't cheat on the score in a pickup game. That's just kind of part of your gamesmanship in going about things.

But when he outwardly argues about something, you go back and watch film, he's right. He doesn't argue much. But when he does argue, he gets hit down there.

But he's kept a great attitude. And we had a tough stretch there. I thought the referee in the Big Ten was really good the last five, six games in regards to him. I thought in the Big Ten Tournament it was good in regards to him.

Before that, we had about a five-game stretch where it was like a hockey game. And so he should be successful since he's a hockey player and be all right with it. But I think that was a little frustrating for him.

We just had to focus and worry about what we can control. But he does a good job. He's a very down-to-earth person. And he just stays the course and keeps battling.

Q. It's 23 years since a Big Ten team has won it all. It's not like schools haven't made deep runs. You've had a number of teams in the championship games. Do you have any theories as to why you guys have not been able to finish? Is it just brutalizing each other during the year? The nature of the beast of this tournament?

PAINTER: I would think there's a lot of different, probably, reasons. But like putting your finger on just like one thing, why that's happened, I always look at it -- and I talk about this in the ACC / Big Ten Challenge -- you've got to do your part without sitting there looking at your whole league and say something in theory why it hasn't happened.

I can sit here and tell you that Purdue's got to do a better job. I've got to do a better job. You just keep fighting. The thing you have to do is keep putting yourself in the position that we're in right now. We've been a top-five seed, I think, for six straight tournaments, maybe seven straight tournaments.

We've put ourselves in really good positions. Just keep doing it. Like, keep fighting. There's a lot of negativity when you lose. You get beat in the first round, get beat in the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight whatever it might be -- I wish it was easier. It's just not. There are really good teams that you're playing, and you just gotta be better.

But that's what we've got to do as a whole when it comes from Purdue. We've got to be better and keep competing. And you gotta understand it could be your time right now so you wouldn't be able to ask that question. That's just kind of our focus. Instead of putting it on everybody else, like, let's put it on ourselves, and let's be better and do a better job of representing our league.

Q. I think it was Caleb Furst who told me, maybe a week or two ago, this feels like Ground Hog Day because we're playing Big Ten team after Big Ten team. Now you've played 23 in a row. How much of a breath of fresh air is it to go see some strategies, see some teams you're not familiar with?

PAINTER: Yeah, when you get into conference, I think it holds with any conference, the opponent actually knows your stuff better than you do, when you get into some of those games, it gets really difficult. But it's also a different style.

So like now you're going to face different styles if you can keep advancing and you gotta adjust to them.

I think the one point to it is you're hoping what you do is harder for them to adjust to than what you have to adjust to them. And I think Zach kind of holds true for that, if you've not faced him.

People have taken him away and then he's gotten 10 offensive rebounds in a game. People have played him one-on-one and he gets 30. People have doubled him and he's gotten 30. People have done different things. So your hope through that and through our team's willingness to play through him, that we're causing more problems for them than they are us.

After a while, when you're constantly playing teams that are physical, that know your stuff, I think it will be really, really good to get in here to where they're going to call fouls by the letter of the law and you're facing some different people also.

Q. When you have a program whose core value is competing hard as Purdue's is, how hard was that lesson to learn that in the NCAA Tournament stage last year the other side competed harder, and how much of a driving force should that be now, that win or lose you never let that happen?

PAINTER: What's frustrating as a coach is that we played well against Yale and we played well against Texas and obviously advanced to the Sweet 16. There are no red flags that you're not going to step out and take care of the basketball and compete harder than we did.

And so then when it happens, because that's your job, right? That's your job as a coach to be able to see some things because it is your team that others can't see from the outside. So that was a real surprise kind of for us.

But we knew as a coaching staff how tough they were. And they actually had played better in the previous games. Saint Peter's had played better against Kentucky and played better against Murray State than they played against us. But they were tough as nails.

And so you learn from it. And you never fix that. Like you never get to where -- I always say that about rebounding and taking care of the basketball, the same that goes with toughness. You never get to a point and say, hey, we're tough on tough, and we can't be any tougher than we are.

You never get to a point and say we have the rebounding solved. We'll dominate the glass by 20 every single game. We've got the turnovers solved. We're only going to turn the ball over six to eight times every single game. It's just not the way it is. Different styles, different factors go into it. You keep going. It's hard to take, but you keep going and you learn from it and hopefully, you don't let it happen again.

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