By Charles Jay
There seems to be a sentiment about Purdue Boilermakers coach Matt Painter. Evidently he is well-liked, and has put a lot of time in. Colleagues and fans feel good about him being able to steer his team into the Final Four.
Honestly, I’m not sure there is anything particularly admirable about a team that has, among other assets, a 7-foot, four-inch center and has been beaten in the last two NCAA Tournaments by teams like St. Peter’s and Fairleigh Dickinson, who would hardly ever have an opportunity to recruit top-shelf prospects.
Does underachievement somehow make a coach sympathetic?
On the plus side, he’s been the Big Ten coach of the year five times, which means he does well in the regular season. He has been as far as the Sweet Sixteen on six occasions, but never this far. So I guess the feeling is that he’s “due.”
By the way, the 7-4 center we’re talking about is Zach Edey, who has just won his second straight national player of the year award.
It wasn’t Edey’s fault that Purdue failed against FDU last season. He had 21 points, 15 rebounds and three blocks. His team didn’t take advantage of the fact that he was getting extra attention in the middle, as they hit just five of their 26 attempts from beyond the three-point arc.
The difference between last year’s Boilermakers and this year’s Boilermakers is that last season, they were generally rather mediocre from long-range, shooting only 32% triples. But this year they have been on fire. They are hitting 40.6%, which is second best in the nation. The main engine behind that is Braden Smith, who has established himself as a premier point guard. Not only has he nailed 44% of his three=-pointers, he’s also chalked up a ratio of 66 assists to 15 turnovers in the last seven games. Fletcher Loyer (44%) and Mason Gillis (47.5%) are also very sharp from the outside.
So it’s a proposition where you have to pick your poison.
Edey had 40 points and 16 rebounds in the Elite Eight win over Tennessee. But that whole thing was not easy. And Purdue only hit three triples in the entire game.
Now comes North Carolina State’s Wolfpack, which didn’t figure to be in the Big Dance at all after their conference season. But then the light came on, apparently, in time for them to beat Duke and North Carolina (and conquer Virginia’s Pack Line defense) to win the automatic bid from the ACC.
Texas Tech is a very good team, and they were the higher-seeded team in the regional (sixth). But NC State moved past them, then upset-minded Oakland, and with the victories over Marquette and Duke in the last two games, they are, we would argue, a team that can compete with the elite, even though their overall numbers don’t tell us that.
DJ Burns, a 275-pound bulk, had 29 points against Duke. And so you have a two-headed situation to consider – will the presence of Burns, along with Mohamed Diarra (a rebounding machine) and sub Ben Middlebrooks bring enough size to somehow mitigate the effect of Edey in the middle? Or does Purdue’s big center render less effective what NC State wishes to do close to the hoop?
With so much time to prepare, I’m guessing that Kevin Keatts will come up with a way to challenge Edey or even maybe get him into foul trouble. In my WagerWAR competition, I’ve decided to take nine points here.
In the other Final Four game, I have to go with the UConn Huskies, who did something I still can’t believe in the Elite Eight – they went on a 30-0 run against Illinois, a very capable team and Big Ten tournament champion with a first-round caliber player in Terrence Shannon leading the way. Those kinds of things just don’t happen.
A lot of people would like to see a matchup in the finals between the two big men – Edey and Connecticut’s 7-2 Donovan Clingan, who doesn’t appear equipped to go 30-35 minutes but is the most dominant player on the floor when he’s out there.
I was reading somewhere that Clingan has permitted only four points in the paint while he’s been in the game. He does control the middle, which is why the scouts in the NBA are wild about him. He’s going in the lottery, without question. How high that is may be determined by what happens in these last couple of games.
The Alabama Crimson Tide is in the Final Four for the first time ever. They are the nation’s leader in scoring, at almost 91 ppg. They like to play at a high tempo, although that is the kind of thing that has gotten them into potential trouble. They’ve lost eleven games. Seven of those losing margins have been of the double-digit variety. And remember that we already seen how the Huskies can roll things up in a hurry.
Let’s be honest – UConn won last year’s national title outscoring teams by 20 points per game in the tournament. This year they have been even more terrifying, with an average 27.75-point victory margin. The team that beats them is going to have to stop them in the halfcourt.
The Tide may not be equipped to do that. In terms of Adjusted Defensive Efficiency, as it is posted at KenPom, an analytics site that everybody refers to, they are 105th in that category, Nobody that low is going to impact UConn’s #1-ranked offense. And the defending champs are liable to find themselves with a lot of free throw opportunities, because ‘Bama fouls people.
And I know what you’re going to say – you’ve got to pay a premium with UConn. That’s been the case for a while, but Dan Hurley’s team is a marvelous 26-11 ATS when laying points. We’re not afraid to do that.