What Purdue Coach Matt Painter Said After Win Against New Orleans

No. 1 Purdue basketball defeated New Orleans on Wednesday night at Mackey Arena to move to 12-0 on the season. Here's the complete transcript of coach Matt Painter's postgame press conference, including video.

D.J. Fezler | Dec 22, 2022

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Purdue Boilermakers

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — No. 1 Purdue basketball stayed undefeated with a 74-53 win over New Orleans on Wednesday night at Mackey Arena. The Boilermakers improved to 12-0 on the season, including a 2-0 mark in Big Ten play.

Here's the full transcript of coach Matt Painter's postgame press conference, including the full video attached to this article:

On what Purdue learned about itself playing without junior center Zach Edey...

Painter: It's kind of an odd deal because anytime you're dealing with a great player who's big, they normally get in foul trouble. And he hasn't this year. And so you just normally have natural times where your center just gets into foul trouble, then you got to find your way through the game. And then you got to have segments of the game where he's not in.

Well, that hasn't happened with Zach this year. We've played him less minutes in some games that we've won pretty convincingly. But for the most part, when he's been out there, he's done a great job with that, so we haven't had to do it. This was a great game, great experience.

I thought New Orleans played really hard, did some things. Once again, we didn't shoot the ball well from 3 and we're gonna have to be able to make some shots there. I thought Trey Kaufman was great. Caleb was under the weather and really battled to play for us and I thought that was a great sign. You know, Mason was able to play a lot of minutes after being out which was really good.

I thought Braden Smith's effect on the game was huge. You know, if you just look when he's out there, he makes things happen. He makes us go just with his decision-making and his toughness and his ability to you know, mix it up.

Great game. Obviously, Zach's not feeling well, and hopefully, he gets some rest and gets better and he can go on the 29th.

On Drew Brees returning to Purdue to help the football program as it prepares for the Citrus Bowl...

Painter: Purdue is a special place, it's cool. Very fortunate to be a part of it, and obviously we look after each other when things are kind of sticky like it is for those guys competing for a bowl game.

It's great to see someone of Drew Brees' stature. He can be a lot of places, right? You know, he put in his time and he's still putting in his time trying to help our community and also trying to help our football program. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool to be a part of it, and the one thing about our place is that it's not something that's just while you're in college.

Our program, Coach Keady was great at this, not forgetting about guys and trying to help guys. So you just try to pay it forward, do the best you can to help people in the Purdue family.

On Trey Kaufman-Renn stepping up at center with Zach Edey unable to play...

Painter: It was great. He gets fouled eight times, you're gonna get into a flow. He's had a couple of games where he plays eight to 10 minutes, and you're just not going to get into a flow that way. Zach's a big piece of that.

I always talk to those guys about like, you look at it like you did something wrong. When in reality, somebody else is playing and that's hard because then the next guy's gotta match to him because he's gonna guard the biggest guy. So who guards that second-biggest guy? Sometimes that guy is traditional, and sometimes he's smaller, or how they scheme and how they do things and how they move.

But you see when he gets the ball and we run stuff for him how dangerous he is. It was great to see, and it was great for his confidence.

On how rare it is to have rotational players be able to step up and score 24 points like Trey Kaufman-Renn did...

Painter: Oh, it's huge. Because when you sub, I always say that about throwing the ball inside, let's get to their backups. Let's get to their backups. There's a reason why they're backups. Who has great backup five men? Who does? We do.

Caleb Furst, Mason Gillis, Trey Kaufman, Zach Edey, it's a pretty good frontline. And we said that at the beginning of the season, but you also got a lot of inexperience there where no one's really started, played 30 minutes and then been a main cog of that.

Zach and Trevion split time, and Mason's probably played more, but he also plays off of people. He played off of Trevion and he plays off of Zach. It's great. It shows you what we're capable of, and also shows you our future.

On if Mason Gillis was going to start at forward if Zach Edey didn't miss the game...

Painter: No, Caleb would have started with Zach.

The importance of recruiting high-character guys that buy into the program's system for success...

Painter: Yeah, it's huge. That's a great question because Trey Kaufman is a great example here. He deserves to play more than eight minutes, but you only get 200 minutes as a coach, right? And then, when you have somebody like Zack, the numbers that he's put down and how efficient he's been, how well he's rebounded, someone's getting shorted there.

Caleb Furst is getting shorted, Trey Kaufman is gonna get shorted and Mason's getting shorted. That's just factual. Like, if he's playing 30 minutes, now they're splitting 50 minutes between three people, and then if one of them plays really well, like Caleb played so well the second half of Davidson, I'm a fool to take him out. He got 10 rebounds in a half and in shorter time than that.

So when you look at it that way, now those guys, they got to keep that under consideration. From their perspective, it's hard. But those guys, when they get their opportunity, and if they're mad and they're frustrated, they won't play well. But if they can get it and they can have high character and understand things, now when they get their opportunity — you hear the guys in the NBA say it all the time — you don't get ready, you stay ready. You just stay ready at all times.

Your number gets called, you get that opportunity, if you're over there mad and you're frustrated and you think that someone's doing you wrong, you're not going to play well. So for him to get this opportunity, it just kind of shows you where his mindset is. He kept his focus on his work and he played well.

On playing in Mackey Arena as the No. 1-ranked team in the country for the first time in program history...

Painter: We haven't been a program that, from an attention standpoint, we've been very consistent. You look at Coach Keady's years, even before that, we've been very consistent through the years. Winning Big Ten championships, competing for Big Ten championships even when we come a little bit short.

So to be able to see that, you know, we get slighted at times. We don't get covered like other people, and I love it because I don't like the attention myself. I could care less. But like from a program standpoint, you know, it's pretty cool. For me, from a selfish standpoint, the place I like is for recruiting.

Because now people see, hey, back-to-back years you've been No. 1 in the country for the first time in the Big Ten since 1976 with Indiana's great run that they had. That's an amazing stat, and these guys have worked really hard.

We've not had any handouts, we've had to work for everything. And I'm just proud of our guys. We lost a lot of talent, and our guys didn't get ranked, no one gave them their just due. But we've earned it. But we got to keep it up because this isn't the season. This is just a third of the season.

On Mason Gillis asserting himself on the offensive side of the court...

Painter: I don't know if because there was a void. I thought what he did well, he's a good jump shooter. And he hasn't shown his pull-up. He's got a good pull-up. So he got deep there and reverse pivoted and made that little turnaround. He's capable of making that, he's made that in high school.

You know, he plays off with people so he doesn't get a lot of things run for him. Sometimes you don't get anything run for him. What I liked about it was he played off his shot fake. Most of those drives were him shot faking and them leaving their feet and then him getting in there.

He punched it a couple times where he penetrated and pitched. Those were good plays, then he made a couple plays himself. He got fouled. So I thought he played really well and did some really good things.

On Trey Kaufman-Renn's footwork as a post scorer...

Painter: He's had great footwork, that him. Give his high school coach credit. Those guys, you know, he came to campus that way he's got the little spin cycle there. He kind of does it reverse, Mason said that he didn't travel, but we'll have to wait and see. He's kind of got that reverse spin that's very unorthodox, but it's practical.

He uses it to score the basketball and it just seems to create space and he goes opposite of the way you think he's going. He's good. He's pretty nimble down there. I just think for him, that's his comfort level. Like he just has to be able to get into a game and get comfortable quick. That's a hard thing to do coming off the bench.

On providing encouragement and energy to the team throughout the game...

Painter: Just trying to be encouraging, just trying to you know, when they do good things like whatever, I'm always saying that I'm big on trying to reinforce doing the right thing instead of just always yelling when someone does the wrong thing. And trying to talk more when people are making mistakes or whatever and kind of talk them through it.

As long as you're trying to do what we asked you to do, good things are gonna eventually happen in the long run. But just always trying to reinforce I always like that as a player. I always like it when you didn't achieve what you wanted, but you're trying to do what you're supposed to do, I think there's something positive about that. Because obviously, when you do that you stay connected.

You know, everybody stays on the same page and you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. And sometimes you're gonna fall short in competition, so I'm that way always.

On Ethan Morton's defense and adjusting to New Orleans guard Jordan Johnson...

Painter: We just put Ethan on him and that was our adjustment, more than anything. And that's what stinks for some of our guys coming off the bench in our backcourt, because if Braden Smith's in the game and he's making that kind of impact, then you have to have Ethan on him, it just leaves one slot, right? And that stinks, but it's part of basketball.

Be that guy that can guard somebody, you know? So when you have that ability like Braden's impact on the game, you're going to stay with them. Zach Edey's impact on the game, you're gonna stay with him. Well, now when someone gets going like that if you're that guy that can shut people down. You got to have the value to where they can't take you out and then that's hard, but it's reality, right?

And I thought Ethan did a good job. I thought David did a good job. He kind of got away from him in the second half a little bit, and he got to paint a couple times. But I thought Ethan did a really good job on him.

I thought Ethan did a good job on Foster Loyer. Same thing, Foster Loyer hits a couple 3s and then we put Ethan on him, and then he was done making 3s.

On what allows Braden Smith to impact the game in ways that don't show up on the stat sheet...

Painter: He has a high competitive spirit. He has a high intellect and he has an edge to him. And that combination always wins. That always wins. He's a smart basketball player. He's selfless. The quality that he has that most young people don't, some people never get it, is that when things go wrong, he takes it. He takes the brunt of the blame, owns it, and then anytime you can own something, you can fix something.

And so a lot of young people don't understand that. Like, we live in a messed up society. Everyone's got to be blamed for something, you know what I mean? I don't have to point a finger when something goes wrong. Let's just own it and fix it, and he's great at it. He's fabulous because he doesn't do that himself. And so I think anytime you have the guy with the basketball that's that way, Fletcher has a lot of the same qualities. And you kind of see both of them.

When that ball's loose, we got some guys going after it. From Mason to Fletcher to him, but anybody. It's contagious. Good stuff's contagious and bad stuff's contagious, but if you know how to handle the bad stuff you can make it good.