Purdue knows it can win title. And Boilers aren't messing around. 'They’re all business.' (2024)

DETROIT – So this happened after Purdue knocked off Gonzaga in the Sweet 16, and it was captured on video, bizarre behavior I’ve studied frame-by-frame: The Boilermakers, coming off the court the game, appear in the hallway and head slowly for their locker room. Nobody’s talking. Hardly anyone’s smiling. It’s late March and they’ve just handily defeated Gonzaga — Gonzaga! — and this is just so strange.

Finally, a noise from the line of Purdue players Friday night in their white-on-white uniforms: Senior guard Lance Jones, who wasn’t here last year, shouts, “Hell yeah, white!”

Nobody responds. Other than Jones’ outburst, the video is 31 seconds of silent film.

One day later, the Purdue locker room opens Saturday for reporters, and it’s like study hall in there. Not kidding. Junior forward Caleb Furst is hunched over a notebook, studying something that looks to me like hieroglyphics, and I scored an 1190 on the SAT. That’s me, flexing.

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Science or math, I’m asking Furst, or both?

“Genetics,” he says, which gets a blank stare from Mr. 1190. Furst rescues me.

“Science,” he says.

Weird, I’m saying. Purdue is 24 hours from playing Tennessee for a spot in the 2024 Final Four, and the locker room feels like a continuation of their postgame walk Friday night — all silence and blank stares, with a side of science. So I’m asking senior guard Ethan Morton what gives. Seriously, Ethan, what’s happening here? Are you guys happy or what?

Morton nods. An old soul, that one, 22 going on 30.

“We expect to be here,” he says. “Not that we shouldn’t be excited about moving on and whatever, but we expect to be here and we expect to win every game we play, and that’s not over-confidence. That’s just us showing up and doing our jobs and executing at a high level. We expect to do that.”

There are two kinds of teams in March Madness, I tell Morton, joyriders and business travelers, and now I’m telling him I’d said the same thing to Tennessee coach Rick Barnes 20 minutes earlier before asking Barnes: Which one does Purdue look like?

“They’re all business,” Barnes had said.

Morton nods again, maturing right before my eyes, 22 going on 40.

“Obviously our goal is to win the national championship,” he says. “You start out the year, everybody’s thinking about it. But what’s special for us is, you could say that’s everybody’s goal — but how realistic is it for 360 or whatever teams are in Division I? Normally you’ve got a handful, right? And we felt like from the jump we’re part of that handful, so that’s our goal.

“Definitely businesslike,” he said, liking the way Barnes had defined these 2024 Boilermakers. “The best way to describe it for us is just treating every game the same. We didn’t come into the Sweet 16 all hyped up and jacked up because we knew it was a big game, even though it was. We just approached it like we were going to Northwestern on a Thursday night, or we’re playing Ohio State at home on a Sunday. It has to be the same preparation and approach every time, so that’s the approach we’re going to take again (against Tennessee), and hopefully for the next two games after that.”

It’s a vague concept, right? The businesslike approach of Purdue basketball? What you need right now are some visual aids.

And here they come.

Purdue and its NCAA bracket "celebrations"

What you’ve seen, perhaps, is what happened in the Purdue locker room after that 80-68 win against Gonzaga. The same thing happens in every winning locker room in the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments: An NCAA official walks in with an oversized poster of the bracket in one hand, and in the other hand a placard with the team’s name written on it. Someone from the winning team takes the placard and slaps it on the bracket, and everyone goes bonkers.

Maybe you saw what happened Friday night in the Purdue locker room at Little Caesars Arena: Nobody wanted the placard. Nobody cared enough to put it onto the bracket. Finally a Purdue media official handed it to freshman Myles Colvin, who approached the bracket sheepishly, placed the placard into the right spot — albeit crookedly, because who cares — and then gave a halfhearted thumbs up.

What you didn’t see is what happened after Purdue’s first two victories in this tournament, against Grambling State in the Round of 64 and Utah State in the Round of 32, both at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Sources close to the situation, whose identity I swore to protect with my life — fine, it was Colvin and Trey Kaufman-Renn, plus walk-ons Sam King and Jace Rayl — told me this went down after the first two games:

After beating Grambling 78-50: Someone gives the placard to Jones, who goes to the bracket and places “PURDUE” onto the next line. The placard slips off the bracket and lands on the floor, where it stays until a trainer uses some tape to stick the placard on the bracket. Not sure anyone from the roster was there to see that. Not sure anyone cares. As Edey had said after the game: “We did what we’re supposed to do. I don’t think anybody on this team expects any praise for it.”

After beating Utah State 106-67: An NCAA official walks in with the Purdue placard, and nobody grabs for it. Not a player, not a coach, not a media official. Nobody. The NCAA official puts the damn thing on the floor and leaves the room. As the team is filing out, someone from Purdue — another trainer, according to top-secret sources; OK, it was communications director Chris Forman — puts it on the bracket.

The players never saw it. They were heading for the bus back to West Lafayette, to prepare for their next business trip. This one, to Detroit, where the Boilermakers celebrated beating Gonzaga by … going to bed.

“Our goal is to win the whole thing,” Kaufman-Renn said. “That’s it.”

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The Boilers have made their intention clear since March 21, the day before their opener against Grambling. Remember what I wrote that day? Probably not, darn you. But I wrote this: “Purdue’s not in the mood.”

For 12 months after that loss to 16^th-seeded FDU last season, the Boilers have been questioned locally and mocked nationally — “Even I’ve been getting that (stuff),” the delightful Sam King of Columbus North told me, “and I don’t even play” — and they treated this season as something to do, time to spend, before the real season started: the 2024 NCAA tournament.

“We could’ve won every game by 30,” Morton was saying, “and it wouldn’t have mattered.”

He’s not wrong. The Boilers went 29-3, won the Big Ten regular-season title outright, spent much of the season ranked No. 1, earned a No. 1 seed again, and most of them — most of us — shrugged. March Madness is everything, and we’re seeing the results in the way Purdue approaches these games like they’re going to Northwestern on a Thursday night, or playing Ohio State at home on a Sunday.

After beating Utah State by 39 in the second round, sending a chilling message to the rest of the field, Edey was again unimpressed: “There’s no satisfaction. I don’t think anybody on this team — like, I didn’t come back (for a fourth college season) to make the Sweet 16. I came back to make a run, a deep run.”

While Illinois has been celebrating its NCAA tourney victories with water-gun fights in the locker room, the Boilermakers are marching silently back to their locker room, entering it like it’s Genetics class.

“We have a goal in mind,” Fletcher Loyer had said the day before the Gonzaga game.

Mason Gillis said much the same: “We know what we know, and that’s the biggest thing. We don’t have a divided locker room, we don’t have a confused locker room, everybody’s going for one goal — and everybody understands that one goal.”

Beating Gonzaga by 12 wasn’t it, just a step along the way, and consider Zags coach Mark Few impressed.

“They're primed and focused,” Few said of the Boilers after his team’s loss. “They're hungry. They're hunting right now. They're not being hunted. I think that's how you get to Final Fours, and that's how you get to national championship games.”

For 12 months the Boilermakers had bottled up their frustrations from that 2023 FDU loss, unleashing them only on their first three 2024 tournament opponents by a combined 79 points. Now they are bottling up their celebrations, waiting for the right moment to cut loose. Expect to see some of that come out Sunday night, if they beat second-seeded Tennessee to qualify for the program’s first Final Four under Painter, and its first since 1980.

But don’t expect to see all of it. Not that Purdue shouldn’t be excited about moving on and whatever, but it’s like Morton said: The Boilermakers have been definitely businesslike for the first three tournament games, they’ll prepare for the Elite Eight the same way, and hopefully for the next two games after that.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStaror atwww.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.

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