Feature image from Andrew Mills, NJ Advance Media, NJ.com

It takes a sustained level of vulnerability, for the players and coaches and fans, to invest fully – with the knowledge that there’s a significant risk of being hurt when those teams stumble, like we experienced firsthand (again) with Purdue’s loss to Shaheen Holloway’s tough and steady Saint Peter’s Peacocks.

The downside of high expectations are these high profile failures.

(On National Peacock Day. Why is that even a day? In what world did anyone in this country decide to have a national celebration of a bird that isn’t even native to this continent? Why did they decide to put it in March? Why do the planets always align like this?)

There are four blueblood college basketball programs (Kentucky, Kansas, UNC, Duke) who have a yearly expectation to win their league’s regular season title, win their conference tournament, and make it beyond the Sweet 16 – regardless of the decade or era or coach.

But there are a class of programs outside that blueblood-tier, with those same expectations over the last decade. Right now, that tier is headlined by programs like Villanova, Michigan State, Gonzaga, and Arizona. Programs like Purdue, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Michigan, Virginia, Baylor, and Houston are in that tier too – either looking to finally break through after sustained success, or sustain those singular moments when everything fell perfectly.

By definition, programs in that latter group set a blueblood-level of expectations by raising their program’s standards through sustained success.

It takes a very good coach to raise a non-blueblood to those standards, and keep them there throughout the years. (Looking directly at programs who have been there, but slipped – IU, UCLA, UConn, Syracuse, Florida, Louisville, Maryland, Pitt, Texas, and on and on.)

It takes nonstop energy, effort, recruiting luck, roster development, and magical sports alchemy for non-bluebloods to constantly rebuild contending rosters without slipping.

The vulnerability that comes with earning your way into that almost-blueblood tier is that, for the most part, those four top-level blueblood programs can seemingly automatically rely on those sustained ingredients each year. Kentucky fans are undoubtedly genuinely disappointed that this formidable 2022 team stumbled in the first round against Saint Peter’s… but in the back of their minds, they know that another contender is ready to go next year, and every year after that.

For non-blueblood, high-expectation programs like Purdue? Multi-year builds crescendo in rosters with a mix of talented senior starters, steady role players, soon-to-depart NBA draft picks, and promising freshmen off-the-bench (think 2017, 2018, 2022). So when the stumble happens (as it does for every single team except each year’s one champion), it hurts so much more.

Vulnerability.

Compound that when the roster includes multiple unique centers, and a surefire top-4 NBA pick guard. Compound that again when the roster is likeable and fun. Compound that once more when the team is led by a coach who never embarrasses himself or the school or the fanbase, is perhaps the best hang out of every coach with sustained high expectations, and is every coach’s favorite coach and every reporter’s favorite interview.

It takes a very good coach, with a forever-long attachment to the program, with a long-term investment from a stable athletic department, in a hotbed of basketball talent to keep these non-bluebloods competing at a level to sustain blueblood-levels of expectations. This is the bright side of the Matt Painter-Purdue pairing.

The downside of these high expectations is that the stumbles hurt exponentially worse, especially to a program that feels as snakebitten as this one.

I come out of this season, and the post-Carsen era, with the belief that the most likely way Purdue can break through the 42-year-and-counting Final Four drought (and actually compete for its first real National Championship) is if Painter continues to be a very good coach who attracts very good players to campus and very good assistant coaches to the staff, doesn’t embroil Purdue basketball in the embarrassment that so often engulfs coaches of that caliber (ahem, Sean Miller), and can adapt to college basketball’s ever-changing landscape (ahem, Tom Crean).

The only way those non-blueblood teams finally break through the ceiling is through sustained, annual construction of rosters that keep those expectations sky-high. Matt Painter has done that, and it looks to continue for the upcoming post-Trevion/Jaden era.

You would think the anti-Painter people would be sick of having this argument. I know I am. Painter has been here for 17 years, and there have been five seasons where the team was either expected to be bad and was (2006, 2013, 2014) or met mediocre expectations with a sour ending (2015, 2016). The rest have been teams with high expectations, who met Purdue fans’ raised set of standard expectations (a conference title and Sweet 16) or had an injury derail them (the snakebite).

All that being said – by my count, 2022 was the first season in Painter’s 17-year tenure where the team had sky-high expectations and no catastrophic injury, but failed to meet every single benchmark for success. No Big Ten regular season title, no Big Ten conference tournament title, no march beyond the Sweet 16 despite a road to the Final Four (and beyond) paved in gold.

That’s what makes this year’s gut-stabbing hurt particularly worse than previous patented Purdue gut-stabbings. That’s why it’s entirely fair to be upset with this year’s coaching staff and roster – as always, remembering they are also real people with real emotions who are significantly more devastated than we are right now.

It takes vulnerability to buy-in as a fan. (That vulnerability is certainly there for players and coaches, but I am neither a player on Purdue’s basketball team or a coach on the Purdue staff, so I can only reflect my lifelong-fan point of view.) That vulnerability feels great when, say, the Boilermakers dominate an early-season tournament with fellow blueblood-expectation programs (UNC and Villanova, both Elite 8 Final 4 teams) and reaches the program’s first #1 ranking. That vulnerability feels great when people fawn over the 7’4” starting behemoth center, and his 6’10” All American-level backup, and the most electrifying guard in college basketball.

But that vulnerability always brings a risk of being hurt, and that risk is magnified as expectations are (rightfully) raised. We felt that wound yesterday, maybe deeper than any other time Purdue sports has been stabbed in the gut.

We, as fans, can take our own time to recover from it. Maybe it results in emotionally investing a little less the following season. But the cool part of having a very good coach like Matt Painter, with very good players, at a very good program like Purdue? They will always be there – with sky-high expectations, a very fun team, and no real source of shame that so often comes with college sports fandom – whenever we fans decide we’re ready to be completely vulnerable again.