Purdue Hoops Seniors Have Eyes On The Prize

Top-ranked Purdue had just taken care of business against overmatched Rutgers at the start of December, and the local media — the New Jersey media — was buzzing immediately afterward, waiting for the visiting coach to arrive at the postgame press conference.

NOTE: This story part of Purdue’s The Persistent Pursuit series

Such is Matt Painter’s standing these days as a leading voice in college basketball that he and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo now share the unofficial titles of faces and voices of the Big Ten. So when either comes to town, local writers rely on them to contextualize whatever circumstances the home team is experiencing.

In this case, a prominent Jersey columnist based out of Asbury Park needs a diagnostic from Painter on Rutgers’ struggles this season, as coach Steve Pikiell’s program rebuilds with freshmen. So far, it has not been particularly smooth.

The question prompts a Painter symposium on modern program-building as transfer culture and player compensation considerations loom over recruiting, roster construction and retention.

“It works if you can keep ’em,” Painter says before espousing the virtues of building with “company men” who will stay in one place and prioritize winning and other substantive considerations over most else.

“He just wrote my column for me,” the columnist half-joked to no one in particular as soon as Painter stood to leave.

But Purdue’s coach wasn’t just shining a light on Rutgers’ plight for the locals. By comparison, he was telling the story of his own team’s ascension. The preseason No. 1 Boilermakers are built around fourth-year players Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn, arguably the best trio in the sport, but also a rare foundation of not only ability and achievement, but continuity and experience that could take the Boilermakers a long way this season.

College basketball’s outliers

It didn’t used to be this way, but Purdue’s ability to keep this core together makes it something of an outlier in college basketball these days.

Painter has no aversion to supplementing his roster with transfers, as evidenced by recent additions like Oscar Cluff and Lance Jones. But Painter is not going to recruit a whole new team every season, as most of his peers seem to do, either by choice or due to their circumstances.

The results speak for themselves.

With this promising season’s outcome still to be determined, Smith and Loyer have started every game of their college careers and played leading roles in 97 wins entering the Dec. 20 game against Auburn. Kaufman-Renn has played a part in all of those wins but two, missing just the first two games of 2025-26 against Evansville and Oakland.

Together, the trio has helped Purdue to its first Final Four in nearly a half-century and won two Big Ten regular-season titles and one conference tournament title. They have been part of three No. 1-ranked teams.

When all is said and done, their names will long stand among legends throughout Purdue’s record books. They will almost certainly have accomplished more than any class ever at a school that takes basketball very seriously, in a state that takes basketball very seriously.

“We have a single motivation now,” says Kaufman-Renn, a preseason All-American as a fifth-year senior. “I’ve said to those guys that I feel like we’ve done everything else. (A national championship) is what matters more than anything to us now.”

Achieving that goal certainly won’t be easy, but none of the three seniors signed up for easy when they chose Purdue during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The seniors have seen it all

From the non-traditional nature of their recruitment to Smith and Loyer playing significant minutes as true freshmen, to Kaufman-Renn being the rare blue-chip recruit who excitedly redshirted as a freshman, then waited two seasons for a leading role, very little has come easy to this group.

It was hard when the three of them were part of a historic NCAA Tournament loss as freshmen, and hard when they joined Zach Edey in making a landmark run a season later, carrying the burden of redemption on their backs.

The undercurrent of their collective careers has made Purdue not so much an exception to a modern rule, but increasingly an outlier.

None of them ever had reason to leave Purdue. Still, any of them could have capitalized on the most tumultuous era of unabashed profiteering in the history of a sport that’s been driven by money for generations.

Purdue’s seniors have all done quite well for themselves as is, but Painter has made special mention of his entire team turning away more lucrative options to remain at Purdue.

“It’s just what Paint has built and it’s the type of people we are,” says Smith, the Big Ten’s preseason player of the year and a popular name in the tampering community last spring. “We all have common goals. We all want to win.”

Painter sounds a bit too wholesome to be true sometimes when he talks about the importance of being open, honest and fair with players — not just during their careers, but in recruiting, so that no player or proxy can credibly feel misled. It has fostered an environment where mutual trust and loyalty are virtually tangible, in a competitive landscape where trust and loyalty are as likely to be punchlines as guiding principles.

Since Day 1 for Purdue’s three foundational seniors, they’ve enjoyed abnormally healthy, open and mutually beneficial relationships with their coaching staff, while many of the teams they’re competing against — not all, but many — are doing things transactionally, a few months at a time.

Purdue is rolling out a team led by fourth-year players — stars, no less — against teams led by four-month players.

It’s worked. 

The chemistry these players display is unmistakable, noticeable when Smith races the ball up the floor, knowing the whole way exactly where Loyer is and where he needs to catch the ball to shoot the 3. (If Smith leaves Purdue with the NCAA’s all-time career assists record, those transition looks for Loyer will be every bit a part of it as anything thrown behind his back or 12 feet in the air for Edey to dunk).

The veterans’ synergy is apparent when Loyer runs off a baseline screen and throws a quick entry to Kaufman-Renn to the precise spot he will reach just as the ball arrives.

Actually doing something special

These players came in together, stayed together, grew together, struggled together, thrived together and found common cause together.

That’s where Purdue is different. Not one-of-one by any means, but not nearly as common as it was just a few years ago, when it was mostly the one-and-done NBA mills replacing players every few months.

It makes you feel like you’re actually doing something special and not just collecting NIL checks like a lot of these teams are. It feels like you’re really part of a team and working toward something that means a lot to not only you, but also to a whole university, a great coach like Coach Painter and a great fan base as we have here.fletcher loyer

senior guard

Indianapolis hosts this year’s Final Four.

“Obviously, winning the Big Ten, making the Final Four, those things are special and put us in the history books, but you want to end the season on a win, end the season in Indy, in front of our fans,” Loyer says. “When I committed here five or six years ago, Purdue was in a great spot, but it wasn’t at the mountaintop. If we can leave here having brought Purdue to two Final Fours and winning the Big Ten three out of four years, it would put Purdue at the peak of college basketball.”

And Painter would have done it his way, with company men.

It will have worked because he kept them.