WEST LAFAYETTE — For Paul Lusk to evolve as a coach, he had to leave Matt Painter.

Following his college coaching beginnings at Southwestern Illinois, Missouri Southern and Dubuque, Lusk spent eight seasons alongside Painter.

From 2003-11, the two had been side-by-side on the bench at Southern Illinois and Purdue.

Lusk left the Purdue basketball program to become a head coach.

After seven years as head coach at Missouri State and another three assisting Greg McDermott at Creighton, Lusk returned to the Boilermakers a better coach and learned something about his second-time boss.

While Lusk had grown as a coach, so too had Painter.

"If you do it long enough and you have an open mind, you're going to have your core principles, your staples that you believe in, but then you say, you know what, maybe it's better to do things this way," Lusk said. "We were completely different in the early years."

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Coaching Purdue in 2021 resembled very little of coaching the Boilermakers a decade earlier when Lusk left.

But it was immediately known to a new era of Boilermakers that Lusk was someone who knew the lay of the land.

"He's very experienced," fifth-year senior Mason Gillis said. "Between being at Creighton and other schools, coming at Purdue and then coming back, he's seen a lot of things. Being able to communicate with him about different situations, it helps.

"He has an old man's energy. It's not like a young guy that is running around yelling all the time. It's like an old grandpa kind of that gives us different emotion."

But now, Lusk was in a scenario where each member of Painter's staff had an outlined role. Lusk honed in on his role doing defensive scouts and working with the guards.

"It's helped out guys. It's the football-type deal. I truly believe in it," Lusk said. "I really like it. It's a very efficient way to do it. All hands on deck for every game."

Painter had grown wary of having multiple people tossing opinions in his ear during a timeout.

So more than a half decade ago now, Painter made the decision to assign each coach a duty.

Previously, each coach was in charge of scouting a specific upcoming opponent. Now, each coach has his own role for every opponent. On the defensive scout with Lusk is Terry Johnson. Brandon Brantley handles the bigs and is in charge of personnel. P.J. Thompson and Sasha Stefanovic, both former players for Painter, handle offense and out-of-bounds plays.

Painter meshes all that together.

In today's world of college basketball, if you don't evolve, you fall behind.

"It was a little rocky at times, but Matt made it a special program and he’s one of the best coaches in the country," said Bruce Weber, who Painter succeeded as Southern Illinois head coach in 2003 when Weber took the same position at Illinois.

Weber going to Illinois opened up the opportunity for Lusk to move from Dubuque to Southern Illinois on Painter's staff. Lusk would follow Painter to Purdue one year later, working under Gene Keady for one season while Painter was the head coach in waiting.

Lusk had to leave Purdue and Painter understood that.

But when he was ready to return to West Lafayette, he came back better than ever.

And with him, Purdue is better than ever, too.

Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter and Instagram @samueltking.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Assistant coach Paul Lusk returned to Purdue basketball a better coach