Express Thoughts : All things possible again, Braden Smith's will and more

Our Gold and Black Express Thoughts column with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind.

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

If there’s one best-case takeaway from Purdue’s championship run in the Big Ten Tournament, it’s this: the Boilermakers seem to be actualizing as the team people thought they would be all season long — the reason they were picked as the preseason No. 1 team.

Purdue played its best basketball of the season in Chicago and sustained it in an unwavering manner over four games in four days, just before getting into the NCAA Tournament as a No. 2 seed, not long after it had become easy to write the Boilermakers off and leave them lying in the gutter for dead.

Purdue’s seniors all transformed this weekend into the very best versions of themselves. The defensive side of things fell into place incredibly well and, again, was consistent over four games in four days. The frontcourt was excellent, the point guard play was impeccable, and Purdue got a reminder of how good it can be when all of those elements fall into place.

After celebrating a championship to wrap up these seniors’ great Big Ten careers, the Boilermakers went into the TV room at the United Center to learn they had received a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament — and, from the outside looking in, a hell of a draw.

Keep this up, and all things are possible.

THE BEST OF BRADEN SMITH

What you saw this weekend in Chicago was the elite version of Braden Smith Purdue has needed all along to win championships and make a deep run in March.

Purdue’s unevenness during the regular season was indeed a total team effort. But when you are the best player in the country — or one of them, and certainly one of the most influential — the highs reflect on you in an outsized manner, and the lows do as well. It’s the life of a quarterback, and Smith is Purdue’s Patrick Mahomes.

As someone who has covered Braden Smith for more than half a decade now, I have seen that uncanny ability to rise to the occasion, take games over, take events over and impose his will and fearlessness on basketball games, the players whose eyes pop out of their sockets like a cartoon in premier matchups. For as great as Purdue’s frontcourt was against the Monstars on Sunday, Smith had that game on a string offensively. Among the many reasons Purdue won that game, that was right at the top of the list.

Purdue played with unreal energy, defensive connectedness and effort in Chicago, and that is why the Boilermakers are Big Ten Tournament champs. The face of it was Smith’s diving steal-assist in the opener against Northwestern. That will age as one of the most iconic plays of the modern era for Purdue basketball — think Zach Edey blocking Dalton Knecht, Chris Kramer sliding on the floor, Chris Kramer stepping to D.J. White, etc. — and it sums up Smith as a competitor perfectly.

The best version of Braden Smith has shown up at exactly the right time.

Purdue as a hole looked like it had a fire lit under it this past weekend, and no one plays better aflame than Braden Smith.

I just want to say this about Braden Smith, too: there is a very fine line between criticism and sky-high standards, and the standard Smith has set for himself as a competitor is almost unreasonable.

Over the many, many AAU and high school games I saw him play before he even got to Purdue, I watched him time and again just eat fellow elite players for lunch. He found disrespect wherever he could — whether it was real or imagined — and he met the moment every single time.

It was the Marquette game his freshman year where it really beat you over the head that this guy was going to be a very, very special player at Purdue. And it was after Purdue won the PK85 in Portland — maybe after the first game — that I suggested Braden Smith could be Purdue’s version of Mateen Cleaves or Cassius Winston: A player who elevates the program to a higher level.

That is precisely what he has done, not only with his skills as a basketball player but with his competitive will. That is the standard.

So when Purdue fell short a bit this season, and moments came and went when you expected to see that version of him, pointing that out isn’t scathing criticism as much as it is the context of the standard he has set for himself with his own level of performance.

MONEY FOR NOTHING

Shout out to journalist Matt Brown of Extra Points for his work assembling a comprehensive database of college basketball spending information. Follow him and support his work, please.

good morning I FOIA'd the operational budget for more than 200 MBB programs

Here's who spends the most, the least, who gets the most (wins) out of the least money, and what you need to spend to make it deep in March:

(full data in link below) pic.twitter.com/xejiaetO4D

— Matt Brown (@MattBrownEP) March 16, 2026

Anyway, I have Purdue’s most recent expense report filed to the NCAA for the 2024-2025 athletic year. It shows men’s basketball spending at $14,040,438 or roughly 44 percent of what its longest-standing rival, Indiana, spent, and two-third percent of what its arguably most relevant modern rival, Michigan State, spent.

This is very important context, so listen closely, please.

This is not a reflection of insufficient institutional support. Purdue’s administration is beyond-committed to Matt Painter and his program.

If he wanted more, he’d more than likely have it. But Purdue might have the lowest-maintenance coach in college basketball. As long as he has what he feels he needs, he’s all set. After that, it’s on him.

He has a great contract, he has a strong staff of his guys, support staff around him willing to handle responsibilities beyond their job descriptions — you might not know all that much about Elliot Bloom or Nick Terruso — but they’re load-bearing walls for a program that runs pretty smooth.

The facilities are fine, the revenue-sharing situation is fine and there is enough NIL infrastructure to compete at championship levels, though obviously there’s never too much of such things anymore.

There’s no real need for having stuff just for the sake of having stuff. You don’t need a special adviser to the special assistant to the head coach’s chin-wiper. You don’t need to make a cosmetic name GM hire, followed by a media junket, just to steal some short-term publicity.

It’s a modest program, and that’s part of what makes it great. It all starts with the head coach.