Matt Painter has handed the reins to Braden Smith, and No. 1 Purdue is in good hands.
What we’re watching is Purdue play the hardest schedule in the country and damn near master it, with just one loss after 15 games. What we’re missing, if we’re paying too much attention to Zach Edey and the historic season he’s having to cap his historic career, is the fact this is no longer Zach Edey’s team. Nor is it coach Matt Painter’s team, not really, and before Painter gets mad at me — hey there, Matt — let me assure him, and you:
He’s going to love the next sentence.
Because this has become Braden Smith’s team.
Edey is everybody’s All-American and soon to be the two-time national player of the year, the most decorated Purdue player of all time, but Braden Smith has become this team’s physical and emotional leader, and the Boilers needed all of that to survive No. 8 Illinois 83-78 Friday night at Mackey Arena.
Insider Sam King: No. 1 Purdue passes latest test, topples Illinois in top-10 battle
More: Purdue player ratings, led by Trey Kaufmann-Renn
Some other Purdue players stood out in this game, too, and they deserve billing above the bold-faced words — a subhed, you call that — coming soon. Trey Kaufman-Renn, for example. TKR could be another thing you’re missing, blinded as you could be by the brilliance of Edey. Kaufman-Renn, who has been playing better and better by the game, had a season-high 23 points against Illinois. That was six more than the 17 scored by Lance Jones, the Southern Illinois transfer who also gets overshadowed by the two stars on this team.
One of those stars is Zach Edey, of course.
The other is Braden Smith. Here comes the subhed. I wonder what it’ll say…
Matt Painter has never had a Braden Smith
Here’s the stat line for Smith against Illinois: 14 points, six rebounds, six assists, four turnovers, three *heated arguments.
*Mostly.
Consider this just another game for Smith, just another in a long line of similar games he has had and will continue to have for Purdue: points, rebounds, assists and feistiness. Matt Painter has never had a player like this, you know. Put another way: Matt Painter has never had anyone remotely close to Braden Smith.
Am I saying Smith is better than Carsen Edwards or Jaden Ivey or This Guy or That One? Well, let’s go back and look. Says here I wrote that “Painter has never had a player like this.” Unless you can find some hidden meaning in there, suffice it say this: I’m not calling Smith better than Edwards or Ivey.
I’m calling him different, unique in the way coveted by coaches like Painter. His teams are going to score, you dig? Edwards, Ivey, Dakota Mathias, Zach Edey, Vince Edwards … Painter can coach some offense, and he always has guys who are either 7 feet tall or capable of making 3-pointers. Not a bad starting point, as far as systems go.
But Painter’s never had a coach on the floor like Smith, a guy he can give the ball without covering his eyes. That was his past two “point guards,” Edwards and Ivey, and I put those words in quotations because they dribbled a lot and passed some and had the ball all the time. To the untrained eye, sure, they were “point guards.” But not really. Ivey averaged 2.6 assists per game at Purdue before turning pro. Edwards averaged 2.5 assists. That’s what, 5.1 assists combined?
Braden Smith is averaging exactly that for his career, and the number is rising. He’s at 6.7 assists per game this season, but what he’s doing is more than that.
It’s more than his 13-ppg scoring average, more than his 5.5 rebounds per game, more even than that trio of stats — 13 points, 6.7 assists, 5.5 rebounds — putting him in select company, historically, in the Big Ten. Just five players have done that over a full season, ever. Smith will be the sixth, and he's done it against a schedule featuring six of the country's top 11 teams according to the NCAA's NET ranking: No. 4 Arizona, No. 5 Alabama, No. 6 Tennessee, No. 7 Illinois, No. 10 Marquette and No. 11 Gonzaga.
What Smith does — what he did Friday night to Illinois — is more than numbers.
Do not taunt Braden Smith
First of all, Smith was outscoring Illinois by himself for 10 full minutes. At one point it was Braden Smith 10, Illinois 4, and only at the game’s 10-minute mark did the Illini finally score their 11th point to move ahead of Smith. Unfair, really, seeing how he wasn’t even in the game at the time. No matter — Purdue led 22-11.
Smith was feeling it, attacking the rim and using only his right hand to finish with a layup. He was hitting a 3-pointer and pointing to his right forearm. Ice water in the veins, I think he was saying. Don’t really care what it means, other than this: He was feeling frisky, using the next possession to dribble between his legs, over and over — doing the Muhammad Ali shuffle at one point — before getting fouled.
That’s when Illinois’ Coleman Hawkins, who is the Illini’s version of Braden Smith — emotional, fiery — decided he’d had enough. He starts jawing at Smith, and Smith goes right back at him, and what I’ve left out is their size: Hawkins is 6-10. Smith is 6-1. Doesn’t matter. Smith was giving him the business and Mackey Arena had his back, and when Hawkins went to the bench for a rest and Smith worked the pick-and-roll for two points for Kaufman-Renn, Smith strutted back for defense with a look over his shoulder, at the Illinois bench.
At Hawkins.
Fearless, this Smith kid? You have no idea.
In the second half when Purdue was starting to sleepwalk, its 66-45 lead about to implode, Smith committed turnovers on back-to-back plays. Kaufman-Renn must’ve done something wrong on one of them, because at the next timeout Smith was scolding TKR, who scolded him back. Now Smith is getting animated, and he’s winning the argument because Kaufman-Renn is backing down.
On Purdue’s next possession after the timeout, Kaufman-Renn passes to Smith for a 3-pointer. Smith misses but follows his shot for an offensive rebound that becomes an easy layup, and on his way back for defense he’s finding Kaufman-Renn to slap palms. All good.
He’s feisty, this guy. The next time Painter summoned him to the bench — and Painter hates doing that; Smith played a game-high 38 minutes Friday, seven more than anyone else, and leads the team at 31.4 mpg, two more than Edey’s 29.4 — Smith had words for Painter. Or words with Painter. Look, it doesn’t matter why Smith was animated. What matters is what came next:
Matt Painter smiled.
He listened, and he smiled. And then he patted Braden Smith on the chest, right about where his heart is.
A few minutes later Smith would put that heart to use, being the only Purdue player with a pulse in the final three minutes. After Purdue missed its last four field goals and Kaufman-Renn and Edey each missed the front end of a one-and-one foul situation, and after Illinois kept scoring to get within 81-78 with 12 seconds left, Smith put this game to bed. He was fouled with 9.1 seconds left and made both free throws for the final margin, and then grabbed the last defensive rebound and roared the other way with his teammates doing what Braden Smith’s teammates have been doing all season:
Following.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Zach Edey's the star, but Braden Smith leads No. 1 Purdue basketball
