Matt Painter March Madness failures: Purdue coach's tournament record, notable upsets

The NCAA Tournament is a difficult beast to master for college basketball coaches. The one-and-done nature of March Madness is unforgiving because if your team has one bad day their chance of cutting down the nets at the Final Four can go up in flames.

One of college basketball's most successful regular season coaches is Purdue's Matt Painter, who has been the Boilermaker's head coach since 2005 and taken the program to 14 NCAA Tournament appearances with a 15th on tap this year. Despite his long run with the Boilermakers, Painter hasn't experienced a ton of success in March Madness.

Matt Painter's NCAA Tournament Record

Painter has gone 17-14 in the NCAA Tournament during his tenure at Purdue, a run that has included eight exits during the first weekend of it all. If you include Painter's appearance in March Madness with Southern Illinois in 2004, that record drops to 17-15.

The furthest the Boilermakers have gone with Painter is to the Elite Eight in 2019, when they lost in overtime to eventual national champion Virginia as a 3-seed. There have also been quite a few disappointments for Purdue under Painter, especially in recent years.

Matt Painter's Biggest March Madness Disappointments

The most stinging defeat of Painter's March Madness tenure came last season, when he had a No. 1 seed and the National Player of the Year in Zach Edey before falling in the Round of 64 to 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson, which needed to win a First Four game just to earn the right to play the Boilermakers. That defeat was just the second time a 16 has ever beaten a 1 in March Madness and it remains to be seen how Purdue will respond with another 1-seed on the way this year.

The loss to the Knights marked the third straight year that Purdue lost to a double-digit seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Boilermakers were the third upset victim of Saint Peter's Cinderella run in 2022 while they got bounced as a 4-seed in the Round of 64 during the 2021 bubble tournament as they were taken out by 13-seed North Texas.

Another notable double-digit seed to knock off Purdue was VCU back in 2011. If that team sounds familiar to you, it should because the 11-seed Rams went from the First Four to the Final Four that year, beating the Boilermakers by 18 in the Round of 32.

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