ST. LOUIS — Matt Painter did what Matt Painter does best and eloquently Friday night, very well and eloquently, giving perhaps the most thoughtful answer ever to a discussion of high importance responsibilities for medium needs. What made his comments so important was not just the message, but the person himself.
Travis Steele’s incredible undefeated regular season with Miami (Ohio) this winter reignited the annual debate about how mid-majors, striving for quality nonconference games, should use analytics to make or break their NCAA Tournament resumes. This event is held repeatedly every year, but this time it was especially heated. The reasons include 1) the extreme nature of Miami’s success, 2) the RedHawks’ pedestrian non-conference schedule, and 3) the broader question of whether the high majors have an obligation to give the mid-majors a chance to shore up their schedules.
Steele repeatedly suggested in the weeks leading up to Selection Sunday that the Redhawks would not be able to find a major program to schedule, making the case for the team not winning the MAC’s automatic bid. But Painter’s Purdue directly contradicts that.
“If he were in our shoes, he would do the same thing,” Painter said.
For Painter, when and how to speak was important. Purdue’s veteran coach was the perfect person to make his case in a debate that, like many modern sports, has quickly become too zero-sum. It’s not just what he said, it’s because he said it.
Especially because he’s right.
Purdue disputes scheduling controversy from Miami, Ohio
Miami’s case struggles to hold water precisely because of programs like the Painters-Purdue.
It’s not like the Redhawks can’t find a major-major opponent. The RedHawks faced Steele six times in his first three years at Oxford. This time, he was unable to find a suitable partner.
As a related example, Purdue played two MAC teams ranked in the KenPom Top 175 this season: Akron and Kent State. Indiana faced Miami home twice in the three seasons prior to this season. Kent State has prospects in both Auburn and Alabama in 2024-25, while Toledo State has faced Houston State, Purdue State and Michigan State all in the past two years.
Miami couldn’t find the top major team they wanted. miami. What Miami didn’t add was a mid-major team that had that potential.
Consider again their contemporaries. Toledo has final NCAA Tournament teams scheduled this year, Wright State and Troy. Ohio State added Illinois State University and St. Bonaventure. Akron played (and lost to) Yale and Murray State and is still ranked more than 20 points higher than Miami on KenPom.
To his credit, Steele also had Wright State scheduled to beat the Raiders in Dayton in December. As of Saturday afternoon, Miami was the only non-conference opponent this season to have played a better game than No. 243-ranked Pomeroy. Akron played four teams ranked comfortably higher than that. For Kent State University, that number was six.
“I’m going to do what’s best for my institution so I can get into the tournament and help seed,” Painter said. “We’ve played mid-major, but everyone plays mid-major. All high-majors play mid-major. They just say they don’t play.” theythat’s really a backhanded compliment. ”
A coach’s first loyalty is to the program.
Actually, this isn’t a criticism of Miami. It may seem so at first glance, but it is not.
Steele tried to put in a harder schedule — Matt Brown covered a number of high-majors approached by the Redhawks in his excellent Extra Points Newsletter — but presented him with options and ultimately decided otherwise.
It was the same choice as the team that told Miami no. And even though it could have been done differently, the RedHawks ended up fighting the computer.
“I didn’t set the NET rankings. The NET rankings set it for themselves,” Painter said. “But I’m going to go along with it. Well, I’m going to figure it out.”
This is where the discussion gets difficult. What duty of care does Purdue owe to Miami? Or Toledo, Illinois? Or Michigan or Kent State?
Yes, the environment is getting worse for mid-major coaches and programs. Not just in scheduling, but in the fundamental efforts of roster building, retention, development, and even survival. And yes, too many power conference coaches quickly become vulgar when they see top-major solutions on mid-major rosters.
But there is also the proverbial continental divide here, where the merits of the argument flow backwards from one direction to the other. Balancing on top of that is a delicate exercise.
The natural distillation of Painter’s position is correct. A coach must do what is best for his program.
Just because they don’t want to schedule Miami, especially in a season where the RedHawks exceeded expectations and had an extreme run that no one could have predicted, doesn’t make them the bad guys. It holds them accountable. And Miami’s own conference rivals showed it’s still possible to shore up their numbers in other ways.
“To do what’s best for NET, you need the wiring,” Painter says. “If you’re a mid-major player and you say something like that, and now you get a high-major job, you have to be careful. There you’re talking two-pronged.”
His argument goes both ways. By “bozos” (the word he used), Painter refers not only to mid-major coaches, but also to high-major colleagues whose schedules are so lenient that they realize they won’t have a chance come March.
That wasn’t the case for Steele’s team this year. Armed with the strength of a non-conference schedule that ranks No. 360 nationally, Miami enters the field this month at No. 68 as the lowest-ranked AT Large team in both KenPom and NET, then wins games once it gets there.
Schedules are shit.
Why was Matt Painter the right voice for this voice?
This is why Painter is the right person to convey this discussion.
He has been a mid-level coach. He built Purdue from the ground up after taking over from Gene Keady. His Boilermakers consistently pursue a tough non-conference schedule to the best of their ability and don’t shy away from taking on the best in the MAC. Now that his team is among the favorites to make the Final Four this year, he says:
That’s why it’s important to tell what he did. To another coach, the same argument might have sounded hollow or frivolous. The game was perfect for Painter, who sees the game from both sides and has genuine backup.
He also knows he’s not alone, which is why (intentionally or not) he spoke for more coaches than just himself.
“I know Michigan played good people. I know Michigan State played good people,” Painter said. “People who are moving their seed lines are looking at that. Some people are not.”
College basketball has many problems. Some were foreseeable. Some can be fixed.
This isn’t necessarily one of them, but mostly because Miami got the opportunity it deserved anyway. It didn’t matter who said no to the RedHawks, and it didn’t matter that they lost the first game of the MAC Tournament. They took an opportunity and did something with it.
Like many things in college basketball, scheduling is as much art as math. Painter is right. Especially in the age of analysis, it can be approached scientifically. But just as one data point doesn’t create a trend, one team’s experience doesn’t create a crisis.
Miami had a great season in 2026, with or without the help of the high majors. But the Redhawks were never required to do it, they were never stripped of it for some nefarious purpose, and Painter was right and in the right place.
