Like it or not, the tournament is the postseason for college basketball and postseason results do matter. It’s not the be all end all. I’m not sure anyone said it was. I’d rank them something like this:
National Championship
Final Four
Conference Championship
Elite 8
Sweet 16
Round of 32
Michigan is at Iowa on January 12. This would make it seem like he would be available but possibly working his way back? Kris Murray is a nightmare matchup for us so to have him out/limited would be huge.
I think I’d put the regular season conference championship between the final four and the elite eight. The conference tournament and the sweet sixteen are of about equal significance to me.
Of course those are good seasons and he’s a good coach. Is there anyone that thinks he isn’t?
“Keep doing that and you’ll make Final Fours”
He’s made one Elite 8 in 17 seasons at Purdue. Let’s pump the breaks on pluralizing Final Fours. You’d think he’d have one by now with how good of a coach he’s been. 17 years without a Final Four is a long time for someone that even I consider a top 10-15 coach in the country.
I did put it between the two. But more on the tier of a E8 than a F4.
NCAA Tournament success is only important to people who don’t understand math.
Yeah, I agree with that ranking. I’d probably rather make an elite 8 than win a conference tournament.
Official Fan Satisfaction Rankings:
The point isn’t that the postseason results don’t matter. The point is that they aren’t particularly predictive. If you are evaluating coaches you are better off looking at KenPom finishes to hire a coach than hiring a coach who overachieves mediocre KenPom finishes in a couple of tournaments.
You are more likely to get those things that everyone wants based on the fundamentals not the results in a single elimination tournament.
Agreed. And isn’t Wisconsin enabled an easy schedule again this year? Wonder if this problem gets even worse with USC/UCLA? De we know if they are going to football-style divisions or sticking with the same approach?
I don’t think anyone here disagrees with that. The other poster I quoted literally said that anyone who thinks tournament results matter doesn’t understand math.
I’m allowed to think tournament results matter, that tournament results aren’t ALL that matter, that tournament results aren’t predictive, and still understand that 5 plus 5 is 10.
There are also elements to coaching in a postseason tournament setting that aren’t represented by the entirety of the season. It doesn’t mean they are more important or valuable when evaluating the ability of a coach than looking at kenpom ratings. But a coach’s success in winning two games in three days, the second on short turnaround, in a high pressure environment, is definitely something that varies where some staffs are stronger than others and may not be 1:1 with how good they are at building winning regular seasons, recruiting, etc.
Painter isn’t even in the first category in the Big Ten though of “omg they’re bad at that” like Fran is. Sweet 16 runs are a counterpoint to that.
I’d bank on him getting over the hump at some point, but I doubt it’s with this year’s roster even if they dominate the Big Ten. Maybe in 2-3 years if Smith/Loyer are still on the roster and he has some new AA 7’9” center
What I am impressed with Purdue and Painter is that they were pretty terrible defensively last year . Yes it’s still early but they have come back and currently have a top 30 D. I just find it interesting because they have replaced Ivey/Williams/Stefanovic/Hunter/Thompson with
Loyer/Smith/Kaufman-Ren/Jenkins. Slight increase of PT to Furst/Newman big uptick for Edey/Morton and there you go. I would say as well they have played a relatively challenging non conference schedule to go with that.
Trevion and Ivey were two of their worst on/off guys last year (Hunter in that group too).
Edey was +3.8 on offense and -2.4 on defense last year. 
And he’s waayyyy better this year on the floor.
All that being said, I think we still have to see how Edey looks against a great ball screen team.
A lot of Q1 games on the board:
I am sure you know addition, I was not implying otherwise.
I am saying that losing 1 in a 3 game sample is something that happens rather frequently in, say, February, without people suggesting it’s a defining trait of a coach’s career.
Juwan Howard’s career win percentage is like 66%! That cadence is his entire career norm!
I think any single tournament is a small sample size. Even elite coaches with loaded teams lose some tournament games they’d win 9 of 10 times. 17 seasons with a single Elite 8 and no Final Fours is a lot of “it’s just one game”s, though. Water should find its level over nearly two decades.
And I’m not even hating on Painter. I think he’s arguably the best coach in the conference right now and going forward. I just don’t believe his tournament history is one I’d look at say “he deserves a national title”. Beilein? Sure.
A lot of talk and discussion about a coach and his value is ironic coming from a fan base with the most objectively and subjectively worse coach of all time backed up by pure statistics
I’d be begging for more threes 
