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.
- Kelvin Sampson will face Matt Painter and Purdue for the first time since his last game at IU, a win over the Boilers.
- Sampson resigned after the NCAA leveled five major recruiting infractions against him, which frustrated first-year
IU president Michael McRobbie. - Indiana and Purdue became the hot rivalry again, but Sampson’s tenure fueled Matt Painter’s recruiting wins that allowed him to build the Boilermakers to what they are today.
INDIANAPOLIS — On Feb. 19, 2008, two top-15 teams met inside what was then still known simply as Assembly Hall, in Bloomington.
The day had been frigid, temperatures bottoming out in single digits around breakfast before climbing steadily toward the 20s. But inside, the arena was hot with a Big Ten race approaching its crescendo.
This was Indiana–Purdue like Indiana–Purdue had not felt in a long time. It marked the first time in eight years both teams were ranked at tipoff. Fresh-faced Matt Painter’s Baby Boilers led the league, with IU a game and a half behind.
On the court, storylines abounded. Eric Gordon against E’Twaun Moore, a rematch of the previous year’s 4A state title game. Painter’s clutch of promising in-state freshmen, most of whom Indiana had recruited too. Both rivals in the conference title race together for the first time in nearly a generation.
And all that intrigue paled in comparison to the hurricane building outside the arena doors.
When Sampson arrived at Indiana in 2006, just one year after Painter succeeded his mentor, Gene Keady, at Purdue, it seemed the two men would reinvigorate a rivalry that defined the Big Ten for two generations before going quiet. Instead, that night turned out to be Sampson’s last on the IU sideline.
He and Painter haven’t faced one another since. In the intervening years, one walked through the wilderness of work as an NBA assistant before restoring a once-great college basketball program to national prominence, while the other fashioned his alma mater into perhaps the gold standard in the modern Big Ten.
On Friday night, for the first time in close to two decades, the two men will meet again, in a Sweet Sixteen game that will, for 40 minutes, tease a tremendous what-might-have-been for this state’s fiercest basketball rivalry.
Matt Painter’s success at Purdue came as Kelvin Sampson was hired and resigned at IU
That cold February night in 2008 remains among the strangest Indiana’s old arena has ever seen.
Five days earlier, the NCAA had leveled five major recruiting infractions at Sampson. His position, already under pressure from the association’s investigation, looked untenable. The question wasn’t if Sampson would be let go, but how, with decision makers seemingly split between suspension and outright firing.
Then Sampson’s Indiana battered Michigan State over the weekend, with ESPN “College GameDay” in town and star forward D.J. White sidelined by injury. White returned Tuesday night, and Indiana led Purdue the entire second half of a 77-68 win.
Sampson walked off the floor to thunderous applause. For one night, swept away in the delight of relevance restored, IU fans stricken with cognitive dissonance ever so briefly listened to the devil on their shoulder, forgave Sampson, and cheered their hearts out as he disappeared down the tunnel.
And then he was gone.
Purdue and Indiana — the two most historically successful programs in Big Ten history — had combined to win just one conference title in the decade (1996 to 2006) before Sampson arrived in Bloomington.
Briefly, through shared principles of tough-nosed defense, relentless rebounding and a healthy respect for their programs’ traditions, Painter and Sampson looked like they might usher in a new era of bad blood and bottomless success.
“Indiana had gone stale,” former Purdue forward Robbie Hummel told IndyStar, “and certainly Purdue had hit kind of a rough patch.”
Hummel’s recruitment proved an early battleground for the two coaches.
A star forward at Valparaiso, Hummel was among the best prospects in the state in the 2007 class. Indiana had been recruiting him steadily during Mike Davis’ tenure — Hummel was inside Assembly Hall for IU’s famous game against Duke in 2005 — and Sampson wanted in from the moment he arrived.
But Painter had a three-year head start.
Purdue had hired him after one impressive season leading Southern Illinois to become Keady’s successor-in-waiting. When Painter got the head job in full, he surrounded himself with ambitious, charismatic coaches (Paul Lusk and Cuonzo Martin, to name two) like him, coaches who’d done as much legwork in recruiting Hummel, Moore, Franklin Central center JaJuan Johnson and fellow Valpo standout Scott Martin as anyone.
“Matt Painter was a real shot of life for Purdue,” Hummel said. “They really did a good job of coming in and selling us on the fact that, alright, Purdue has been down, but we can get back quickly, and we have minutes to offer.”
Indiana tried to push its way in after Sampson was hired in March 2006, but the die had been cast. The first line in an Indianapolis Star story published that July read, “Purdue 3, Indiana 0.”
“I’d like to think that, had we been here four or five years and had a chance to build those same relationships,” Sampson said, “that maybe those kids wouldn’t have gone to Purdue.”
But they did. And the ones that stayed became the foundation for Painter’s first great generation.
Eric Gordon and D.J. White helped Kelvin Sampson rebuild IU basketball
Which wasn’t to say Sampson was struggling on the trail. If anything, he’d made more noise.
Gordon was widely considered among the four best basketball recruits in the country in 2007, alongside Michael Beasley, O.J. Mayo and Derrick Rose. Wary of Davis’ waning success in Bloomington, Gordon had committed to Bruce Weber’s Illinois in late 2005, just months after Weber led the Illini to the national championship game.
But when Sampson arrived months later, Gordon turned his head south. Indiana still held great appeal, and now it was led not by a beleaguered coach under siege, but an established winner who’d been in the Final Four just four years earlier.
When students reported seeing Gordon with Sampson in Yogi’s, a popular Bloomington bar and grill abutting IU’s campus just enough for the meal to be allowable under NCAA rules, word of Gordon’s visit rippled not just across town but the Big Ten as well.
Privately, Illinois expressed frustration at what was perceived to be a gentleman’s agreement that Big Ten schools not poach commitments from one another. IU suggested — in action if not in word — that any such agreement should be suspended after a coaching change.
Gordon eventually flipped his commitment to Indiana, enraging Illini fans and sparking animus between two fanbases essentially as close to being rivals as possible without acknowledging an actual rivalry.
“In some ways, that was the burning rivalry,” said Baltimore Banner sports editor Chris Korman, then an IU beat reporter for the Bloomington Herald-Times. “Everything felt a little dull with the Indiana-Purdue rivalry, and the Gordon thing was so immediately red hot.”
Sampson made Gordon into the cornerstone of a recruiting class that also included JUCO transfers Jamarcus Ellis and DeAndre Thomas, and another future NBA player, Jordan Crawford.
When his first IU team — undermanned because of turnover but nonetheless fashioned in its coach’s image — finished third in the Big Ten and battled eventual national finalist UCLA to a standstill in the NCAA tournament, fans embraced with both arms the coach from Oklahoma who’d had to explain on his way in the door some misdeeds at his last stop.
Assembly Hall became a fortress again. Students wore tributes to Sampson’s preferred blue Oxford button-down and red tie combination as a salute to their coach. Fans stormed the floor when Indiana upset then-No. 2 Wisconsin during Sampson’s first season.
Then came the sanctions, which surfaced the following autumn. Even as White captained Indiana to a 17-1 start, and Gordon dazzled on his way to breaking Mike Woodson’s Big Ten freshman scoring record, the specter of an NCAA investigation stretched over the season like shadows in twilight.
Everything came to a head in mid-February. The association announced it was leveling five major infractions at Indiana as a result of Sampson’s indiscretions, including the then-ominous “failure to monitor” charge. Michael McRobbie, frustrated the scandal was overshadowing his first year as IU president, demanded swift action.
Then IU beat Michigan State on Saturday, fans’ pregame mixed reaction turned to applause afterward. Sampson left the floor to a roaring ovation Tuesday after beating Purdue. By week’s end, he’d been fired.
“Everyone knew that night that it was the dying breaths of Sampson’s tenure,” Korman said. “It just seemed impossible for him to go forward. It felt defiant in some ways. Even though Indiana fans were fed up enough with Sampson that they made it clear that he could not still coach there, were they mad that it was happening?”
Houston vs Purdue in March Madness agonizing reminder for IU fans
When No. 1-seed Houston faces No. 4 Purdue at 10:09 p.m. Friday at Lucas Oil Stadium, Painter and Sampson will meet again for the first time since that night in 2008.
Neither man wanted very much to engage on the topic during pregame news conferences. Painter remembered his overall record (1-2) against Sampson’s Indiana, losing twice in Bloomington and winning by double figures at home in 2007.
“The other game we won at home, David Teague had 32,” Painter said. “Got a lot of baseline action for David Teague. He made a lot of tough shots in that game. Carl Landry had a good game. Those were our two best players then.”
Sampson didn’t even go that far.
“Doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said, when asked what being back in Indiana meant to him. “I’m just looking forward to playing Purdue Friday night.”
Both men have moved on, each of them to remarkable success. Only 50-some odd miles south of here do the what-ifs remain.
Indiana cuts a frustrated figure standing in Painter’s impressive and lengthening shadow, the rivalry turned one-sided in the last decade.
It’s barely a footnote in Sampson’s career, at least beyond the borders of Monroe County. His biography on Houston athletics’ website waxes on for paragraphs about his achievements leading the Cougars, and treats his Oklahoma tenure similarly.
His time at Indiana merits 64 words trumpeting two 20-win seasons and a small clutch of player achievements. For Houston’s purposes, Sampson essentially never coached at Indiana at all.
Still, for basketball fans of a certain age in this state, when Sampson leads a team in red and white against Matt Painter’s Purdue on Friday night, there will be an inescapable sense of déjà vu.
Sampson’s Houston team plays a hard-nosed, disciplined brand of basketball that once endeared him to the diehards in another fanbase. Purdue will have its hands full controlling possessions in a game bound to be defined by rebounding and turnovers.
“Rebounding is the game,” Hummel said. “Houston is unbelievable at how they pursue offensive rebounds. They just crush teams. Turnover margin, rebounding margin — it’s all about possessions.”
Sampson’s perfunctory answers during his news conference Thursday suggested he had virtually no interest walking backward through his memory to a time when he might have been king in this state, but it would have been impossible to fully escape.
Even ancient history never really is.
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