Big Ten Basketball: Ranking all 14 head coaches heading into 2023-24 season
By Caleb Hall
No. 2: Matt Painter, Purdue Boilermakers
Matt Painter has taken Purdue to the top of the BIG Ten year in and year out, and it is not hard to see why. Painter played at Purdue for 4 years, and eventually decided to go into coaching where he would land a couple assistant head coaching jobs. He was an assistant coach at several different schools before landing an assistant job at Purdue in which he would eventually become the head coach of the program in 2005.
In Painter’s long career at Purdue he has had several BIG Ten titles, multiple sweet 16s, and even an elite 8. Painter has cemented himself as an elite coach not just in the BIG Ten but in college basketball in general. Painter deserves to be in the conversation when talking about any programs long tenured coach. He has Purdue playing some of the best basketball the have ever had and in the last 2 seasons alone the Boilermakers have had 29 wins each.
Painter seems to always seems to have his teams ready to play no matter who the competition is and has turned Purdue into one of the best BIG Ten basketball programs.
There is only one coach in the BIG Ten that outshines Painter.