It’s time we celebrate national champion Connecticut and runner-up Purdue, who they are and how they do things Connecticut and Purdue played for college basketball’s national championship before more than 74,423 fans at State Farm Arena outside Phoenix, a pair of No. 1 seeds with 7-foot centers and storied histories. UConn, which eliminated San Diego State from the last two NCAA tournaments, won 75-60 on Monday night to become the first back-to-back champs since 2007. The real winner? College basketball. Maybe it was only for a single night in the desert. Maybe this is the end of an era instead of the beginning of one. Maybe their sand castles can’t hold back the onrushing tide of NIL and unlimited transfers and the age of entitlement and the professionalization of a once virtuous endeavor and the demise of the educational mission. But we can celebrate UConn and Purdue, who they are and how they do things, admire them, respect them. We should. “To be able to play for the national championship versus Purdue, how good they are, how Matt runs things,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said of his counterpart, Matt Painter, “it’s a real privilege.” They cut different figures on the sidelines Monday night. The benches are a few feet below the elevated court, but the head coaches are given wooden stools above. Painter sat on his and calmly hiked up a pant leg so he could pull up his sock. Hurley never sat in his, using it to rest a water cup and his two-sided play sheet while he skipped down the sideline, screaming at the officials — absolutely berating them, eyes bulging, spittle flying — every time they didn’t blow their whistle on Purdue center Zach Edey. “I wish I had his composure at times,” Hurley said a day earlier, smiling. “(But) I think we do have a lot of similarities in terms of the culture and the old-school values that we have in terms of the type of people that we recruit, the type of teams we have. “I think we’re both very confident people that are authentic and aren’t trying to put on a show. I don’t think there’s anything fake about either one of us. We are who we are.” They patiently develop players over a period of years, resisting the temptation of reloading via the transfer portal and a war chest of NIL. They don’t tell them what they want to hear but what they need to hear. They run intricate offensive sets and share the ball instead letting guys go one-on-one, both ranking in the top five nationally in the percentage of baskets that are assisted. They value character over talent, intangibles over recruiting stars, attitude over athleticism. Nine of the 10 starters on the teams they beat in Saturday’s semifinals were transfers. UConn lost five of its top eight scorers from a national championship team — three to the NBA — and replaced them with one key transfer from Rutgers, a true freshman … and a bunch of guys off the bench. Purdue started three guys from Indiana and another from neighboring Illinois. Here’s how Hurley recruits: They bring you to a practice, let you see him yelling at everybody — “on a heater and being a complete brutal ass,” in his words. Then they bring you into the office and tell you all the flaws in your game. Then they wonder out loud whether you can handle the smoke, whether you’re tough enough to play for Hurley and the Huskies. Guard Cam Spencer: “There definitely was no ass-kissing, and that was the best part about it. I think that’s one of the most special things about UConn, especially nowadays. Kids want to hear all the things they’re doing well when in reality you probably suck and need to get better in a lot of areas of your game.” Forward Alex Karaban: “He was brutally honest. That comes from a blue-collar family that he was raised in. I also come from a blue-collar family that worked for everything. I thought that was a perfect match for me. Other schools, I don’t want to speak too much about it. I just felt more connected with Coach Hurley when he told me I had to work for everything.” Freshman guard Stephon Castle was among the nation’s top recruits and had offers from everywhere. “He’s got great parents,” Hurley said. “They’ve kept him humble all the way through in a sport where we put these kids on a pedestal way before they should be. We treat them like they’ve arrived way before arrival. They didn’t allow that to happen with him. “The way he handled the recruiting process, it didn’t turn into a fiasco. It didn’t go from, ‘I’ve narrowed my list to 20, now I’ve narrowed it to 18, now 12, now nine.’ Like, he was decisive. He watched us practice. He saw our culture. He wanted to be coached hard. They wanted an old-school environment for him to be challenged in, to be held accountable.” Hurley talks about “neon talent.” He explained the pitfalls in a recent TV interview: “Have they played on seven different travel teams? Have they transferred to four or five different high schools? When you talk to the parents in the recruiting process, are they constantly complaining about the coaches after a bad game? They tell on themselves, they drop hints. You’ve got the wrong type of people in that inner circle around your players, they’ll sink your program.” Painter gets it. He’s fluent in the same language. He spoke Sunday about the dangers of the transfer portal and the allure of guys who averaged 20 points for a low- or mid-major program but got a pass on sloppy fundamentals. “You don’t like to say that, but that’s just the truth, the way it is,” Painter said. “A guy comes to a high level, now he’s going to average four to 10 points for you. Now all the things you harp on is what the previous coach harped on, but he just kept him in the game ’cause he needed his 20 points. “Now, I don’t need some joker that’s averaging five points for me to get beat backdoor on two different plays. It’s like, get him out of there.” Culture. Accountability. Old-school values in a new-school world. “People that do it the right way, you can get mad about it all you want, but you have to try to keep your focus on yourself,” Painter said. “If that’s what you want to do, good for you. We can get good
basketball players, mesh ’em together and have a good product.” Hurley was asked about the roster construction of the two teams playing Monday night. The kid from Jersey City flashed a mischievous grin. “I mean,” he said, “I think all of us should just shut up about it and stop trying to help the people that don’t know what they’re doing.”