What Purdue Basketball Coach Matt Painter Said After Win Against Penn State
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Former Purdue assistant Micah Shrewsberry made his return to Mackey Arena on Wednesday, leading Penn State in a matchup with coach Matt Painter and the No. 1-ranked Boilermakers.
Purdue cruised to an 80-60 victory, spearheaded by junior forward Mason Gillis, who scored a career-high 29 points and made nine 3-pointers. Junior center Zach Edey also notched 18 points and 13 rebounds.
Painter met with the media after the game to discuss the team's win and also provided his thoughts on Shrewsberry's job as a head coach with the Nittany Lions. Here's everything he had to say, including video and the complete postgame transcript.
On seeing Mason Gillis' shooting performance
Painter: It's great to see somebody get into a rhythm and knock down some shots. Obviously, he played well in the first half and took some rhythm threes and knocked them down. We started him in the second half because he played so well, and then he just kind of exploded in that first six, seven minutes.
On pressuring Penn State guards Jalen Pickett, Seth Lundy
Painter: We wanted to trap Pickett and then rotate out of it, and we had some breakdowns there when we subbed in the second half. We had guys not rotating the way they were supposed to there, but they're a good team.
I think our ability to keep [Andrew] Funk under wraps was a huge point of the game. Obviously, Lundy shoots the ball well. Pickett has a solid game, he has 12 points, seven assists, five rebounds. He's one of the best players in our league, but we'll kind of take that. That's how good he's gotten.
You know, his ability to rebound, his ability to pass, the ability to score, It's not like 26 points, eight rebounds, I think seven assists or something like that in our first game, which he was just phenomenal in the first half. We have a lot of respect for Pickett because we know he makes them go, but we wanted to really stay with Funk and then do a better job on Lundy.
With that being said, Lundy hit a couple of real tough ones too. But, you know, he normally does. He's a good player.
On Ethan Morton's willingness to play defense
Painter: Intelligent people figure things out, you know. And so as you get there, you don't play much as a freshman and you play a little bit more as a sophomore, you want to start and you want to play major minutes.
You have to figure out who you are at this level, not who you are at the high school level. And Ethan's always been able to score and pass the basketball, and then now, it's kind of roll definition. It's like, what do you want to become? And that just kind of organically evolves in coaching.
When you get into recruiting, you can't sit there and tell everybody that they're going to play shortstop when they get off, then you're gonna have a lot of mad guys. Whoever kind of earns it, gets it. And he's earned it. He's worked really hard and does a lot of little things for us, and you got to give a lot of energy to be able to guard a guy like Jalen Pickett.
I thought that's what he did, just staying with it, being resilient and just continue to fight him. But no, Ethan's been great for us.
On the team's focus before a rivalry game on Saturday
Painter: You always have to keep in consideration when the ball goes in, everything else looks pretty good, right? So if we struggle shooting the basketball tonight, people will say you're not ready. When in reality, you just didn't shoot the ball well, or they just defended you better, whatever that might be.
You know, you have a decision to make when you play us, and sometimes we don't know the decision. If you play somebody and they've played 20 games and they handle their ball screen defense the same way all 20 games, you know in game 21 that's their ball screen defense, right? So you can prepare for that.
But when you have Zach Edey, you really deep down don't know how they're going to do things. We had success in the Palestra against them, and so we knew something would be different. And it was, and they did a good job against Michigan in bottling them up and doubling. So we felt like they were going to come and double us at that time.
I don't try to keep it from like, hey, we have a rivalry game on Saturday, and now we're playing somebody. That's an NCAA Tournament team. Penn State is an NCAA Tournament team. So that's what I told our guys. How can't you get up to play a team that's probably going to be in the NCAA Tournament and have that kind of energy? But how can't you play when each game matters to try to hopefully win the Big Ten championship?
You start losing games and that's going to affect you, and that's where we were last year. You know, we were 14-6 which is a good record. Winning 70% of your conference games in this league is still good, but we should have been better. We let things slip away and that's my fault, and that's our guys' fault. Like we let some stuff slip away.
Now, you have a chance with this group to not let things slip away. Let's be ready to roll, and these guys were. I thought we were sluggish in the start of the second half against Maryland. Just to start with, just taking care of the basketball. Even if we don't make shots, keep getting shots. When you have a great rebounding team, keep getting shots. Keep getting quality shots because now, if it goes in great. But if it doesn't, you have a chance to now get that offensive rebound.
But if you're taking good shots and missing them and they're getting them, you're still going to set your defense. It's still not the worst thing in the world. So when you take bad shots and you turn the ball over, now you're in transition and it's hard to catch up. Especially when you have big people.
On getting Mason Gillis the ball in the second half
Painter: Yes, the things got ran for him. Just a genius I mean, right? No, we ran that base pin there at the end and got him a shot, which people have held and just kind of squished it out and did some different things.
We ran just a simple flash to go high and low in the second half, and they didn't go with him. We're running it to throw the ball to Zach, and he just flashes. Two other times, he'd just triple threat and they backed up off of him and he just shot it.
Then we brought him on just a straight pin after they did all that and we knew the four was doubling, but we didn't think the four would double from ball side right in front of Penn State's bench. So I was going to run something different and I just thought man, maybe this young guy will leave him after he's hit these three threes, and he's not supposed to.
But maybe he'll leave him because they've been doubling with the four, but he hadn't brought the four ball side. So we brought him ball side, threw it in and just held him there, and they went down and doubled him and we got another three.
Once somebody does that and you deal with Zach, now when you throw it in just trying to schematically put people that are different in different spots and let Zach know what his reads are. You're going to have this guy for a layup, you're going to have this guy for a jumper, but if they take that away, here's option B.
Just take your time and be patient. It's good when you're 7-4 when you're doubled, you can be patient and just see over the top of people.
On the chess match between him and Micah Shrewsberry
Painter: Neither one of us play, so it's not what you know, it's what you players know. I don't mean to be funny there, even though I try to be funny at times. You go and sometimes you think like -- when we run after-timeout stuff, I would say 60-70 percent of it was from him. So it's a little surreal.
When he came on board, he handled the defense for the Boston Celtics for six years, but he handled our offense. I just kind of compared it to like a prosecuting attorney and a defense attorney. That prosecuting attorney doesn't make a lot of money, right? So now he wants to make money after being a prosecuting attorney and now he wants to go to the defense side, but he has no idea of being a defense attorney.
But he knows how he thinks because he's always battled him. And so he just flipped it and went to all the after-timeout stuff. I just said whatever you guys struggled to guard when you were the defensive guy of the Celtics, I want to run that stuff. Let's just flip it on people.
So he just took from about 15 organizations like three, four plays from each one of them and then we just kind of went from there. So now, when you come here and you come full circle, it's a player's game. You have to have organization, you have to have structure, you have to know what you're doing. But at the end of the day, they have to have that wisdom and that knowledge to carry it out.
And each one of the games we've went against each other, we've had Zach Edey. I think out personnel has been better than their personnel, so I don't think that's fair when you look at things of that nature because we don't have to scheme against them, and they have to scheme against us.
And if they don't scheme against us, you're going to see what happens in the second half of the Palestra. And now that's what he flipped right there, they just fell asleep with Mason Gillis three or four times and they shouldn't have.
I thought his gameplan and what he was doing, dragging Edey out with [Michael] Henn was very intelligent. And I thought the quick double right there -- you still have to double in my opinion. But if you got the ability to fight and get him out, that's the key. Can you physically get him out?
The people that did the best work against him was Saint Peter's. And their big guy was 6-8, 210 or 215. So take it for what it's worth, it's also the fight inside people. Are you willing just to fight the whole game, and then can you fight without fouling?
A couple of those bigs for Saint Peter's were able to do that, and a lot of people aren't. They get fatigued, and all of a sudden they do something stupid and they grab him, they hold him, they put their knee up his keester.
You guys didn't think you were going to hear keester, did you?
On Mason Gillis making his teammates' jobs easier
Painter: Their antenna should go up to get him the basketball, and I think it did. Whether that was Zach or that was Braden [Smith]. Braden obviously had a good game with nine assists and zero turnovers. Anytime you have your point guard do that, you can outrebound a team by close to 20 rebounds and then have the same amount of turnovers, and then you got a guy hit nine threes, you're going to win the game.
It's good. Our guys were excited about it, they know how much time he's put in, and it's hard. Most people will feel through their offense, and you can't be that way as a player because your offense will come and go.
But your defense, your concentration, your rebounding, taking care of the basketball, those are things that always travel. You have to be solid in those areas. So Mason has worked really, really hard and it's great to see all his hard work pay off.
On the team's offensive rebounds in the past two games
Painter: Well they don't offensive rebound, they set their defense. It's still good because Michigan State does offensive rebound, and one of their offensive rebounds was a team rebound.
That's some consistency in terms of just trying to stay out of rotations. It's hard sometimes to rebound when you get into rotations, too. So I think that was a big statement by our guys just in back-to-back games being able to keep the other team off the offensive glass.
On Micah Shrewsberry building Penn State's program
Painter: You watch the games, and you watch him at Penn State and his ability to get fans in the seats. That's the key for the consistency there. It's kind of harder there because they can come in on weekends and then during the week.
They've really had to battle that, and he's done a really, really good job there. But he's just a great teacher of basketball. He gets along with people, he's got an edge to him, so he's got a really good balance about that.
It's the people in your program and it's the relationships. He's great in relationships, he's very authentic and straightforward with guys. He's a truthteller, he draws those hard lines, but he does it in a diplomatic way.
It's a hard thing to do with young guys. When you draw hard lines, you're in the middle of a season, it's a really hard thing to do. But they appreciate it in time, they don't appreciate it a lot of times in the moment. But they appreciate it in time.
He's done a fabulous job there, and I hope they get in the NCAA Tournament.
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