Matt Painter Talks About Purdue's Goal for 2025-26 College Basketball Season
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Everyone already knows Purdue's ultimate goals for the 2025-26 college basketball season: winning a Big Ten title and returning to the Final Four. But how can the Boilermakers accomplish those tasks? While coach Matt Painter knows his squad needs to improve defensively, the goal is to have the top offensive team in the country.
Purdue has emerged as a fast-paced, highly-offensive team in college basketball, trying to push the tempo and create a lot of possessions. Last year, the Boilers had one of the most efficient teams offensively in the country, highlighted by the play of Braden Smith, Trey Kaufman-Renn, and Fletcher Loyer.
Heading into the 2025-26, Painter hopes that Purdue can have the best offensive team in the country, while also improving defensively and in the rebounding department.
"We were the seventh-best offensive team in the country (last year). The year before, with Zach (Edey), we were the fourth-best offensive team in the country," Painter told A Star Struck Podcast. "That's our goal for next year, to be the best offensive team in the country."
Purdue was led by Kaufman-Renn, who ended the year with 292 made field goals, the most in college basketball. He averaged 20.1 points per game. Loyer had one of the top three-point percentages in the country, shooting 44.4% from distance. Smith dished out 313 assists, which ranked second nationally.
Painter knows what he has with those three senior leaders. Leading into the season, the task is getting new additions like Oscar Cluff, Liam Murphy, Omer Mayer, and Antione West Jr. up to speed so they can help the Boilermakers become even more dynamic offensively.
That's something that begins way before the start of fall practices in West Lafayette.
"Our stuff starts in the summer ... we want to have a foundation of how we do things and what we do and how we go about it," Painter said. "But we're also going to make our hard work fun. Our stuff is not a boot camp at all."
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Dustin Schutte is the publisher of Purdue Boilermakers on SI and has spent more than a decade working in sports journalism. His career began in 2013, when he covered Big Ten football. He remained in that role for eight years before working at On SI to cover the Boilermakers. Dustin graduated from Manchester University in Indiana in 2010, where he played for the men's tennis team.
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