See March Madness prep in Indianapolis as time-lapse shows court built
Here’s what it looked like at Lucas Oil as Indianapolis is gearing up to host March Madness.
Provided by Indiana Convention Center & Lucas Oil Stadium
INDIANAPOLIS — The Purdue men’s basketball team‘s starting lineup is the only one in the Sweet 16 with all five starters having started their career at their current school.
Coach Matt Painter has addressed the topic many times but took the conversation in a different direction during his news conference Thursday at Lucas Oil Stadium. Here are his thoughts on the different impacts of NIL and the transfer portal:
Transfer portal vs. high school recruits
“Everyone’s a high school recruit at one point. It’s now taking away from the high school recruit and his opportunities. We didn’t want that.”
Will fewer upsets be bad for March Madness?
“We’ve been on the wrong end of this a couple times. (Purdue was upset each year from 2021 to 2023: No. 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023, No. 15 St. Peter’s in 2022 and No. 13 North Texas in 2021.) The upsets and how valuable the upsets are to the common fan (needs to be considered). It’s created March Madness. Let’s not get away from it. It’s a big piece of March Madness.
“(Power conference schools) are always going to have players. But now these guys are just getting cherry-picked from D-IIs and the low majors and the mid-majors and cherry-picked from high major to high major. Now when you look at that, one of the things we talked about in those committees, is this going to take away from the value of a low-to-mid-major program. Because if it’s not fair to anybody, it’s not fair to them. That’s not fair to them. They get a good player. They develop a good player. They lose a good player. Right?
“That piece of it, we talked about taking away from high school recruiting, which it has, and we’ve talked about taking away from the low-to-mid-major programs. Now, time’s going to tell, like, how true that is, right? Obviously it looks like it’s trending that way, but we’ll see through data.”
How does the transfer portal affect the players who won’t be pros?
“And the other thing we talked about was, what you want in life is opportunity more than anything. And 99% of all college basketball players are not pros. Digest that and understand that.
“These opportunities for these young men and women to take is not just like getting an all-conference plaque on the wall. It’s allowing them a better opportunity to have a successful life and have their family. Not for everybody. Some people are going to be successful. Their dad went to college. Their grandfather went to college. Their great-grandfather went to college. You could go on and on and on.
“Some people come from a single-parent home, some didn’t go to college, whatever. If we’re just chasing basketball and we’re devaluing education, what are we really doing here, right?
“From a basketball standpoint, I think there’s some things that you’ve got to look at and there’s also some things from an educational standpoint. And (we need) to make sure we’re doing everything in our power to help them out because a lot gets talked about, OK, these guys haven’t been paid in the past. But education has also put us in some great positions there.
“I don’t think there’s any coaches that want to get away from that. But I don’t like when you have 200, 300, 400, 500 kids put their name in the portal and they had a scholarship and now they don’t. What about them?”
Purdue coach Matt Painter: Challenges of facing Houston in Sweet 16
The Boilermakers play top seed Houston Friday night. Hear what Matt Painter said ahead of the game.
Matt Painter: ‘People that are successful don’t always do what they want; they do what’s best for them’
“You’re saying that kid should be able to do what he wants. People that are successful don’t always do what they want; they do what’s best for them. And we get away from that. But that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to help them and fight them but also be an advocate for them in that fight.
“That piece of it has got to get fixed. Now, if some kid was only going to get an education because he was good in basketball, that’s a good thing. Now he has a better chance to be successful in life.
“Now, if he just jumps schools and he thinks I’m going to go into the portal and get money and get a better situation, and now he doesn’t get a scholarship when he had one, and now he never gets a degree — which we all know a lot of people out there have been very, very successful without a degree — but we all know it helps from a percentage standpoint. There’s no doubt that it helps young people.
“So I think those are the type of things that we’ve got to make sure we keep in perspective, not just, ‘Hey, this kid should be able to go where he wants. Coaches leave their schools and go other places and do that.’
“I understand that. That’s a valid argument. It’s a very valid argument. But there’s a big cohort of young people in there with a lot of different examples in there, and it’s always been our responsibility to try to set the framework of that so everybody has the best chance to be successful. And that has much — not a lot to do with basketball, but basketball really being a vehicle for life.”
