- Purdue to honor the 1993-94, '94-95 and '95-96 teams and their three straight Big Ten titles Saturday
"In the third year, I don't know how the hell we won."
Former Purdue basketball coach Gene Keady wasreferring to the 1995-96 Boilermakers team. It was the third consecutive season Purdue had won the Big Ten title, something the Boilermakers had never done before and haven't since.
"I guess they were just kids who learned how to win, and we just got through the wars," said Keady, who coached Purdue from 1980-2005. "It just worked."
The '95-96 squad was unique in that it didn't have the star power of theprevious two seasons. In 1993-94, Purdue was armed with the National Player of the Year, Glenn Robinson. The "Big Dog" was the first Boilermaker to win the honor since John Wooden in 1932, and averaged 30.3 points.
Senior forward CuonzoMartin averaged 18.4 points for Purdue in 1994-95, picking up the scoring load after Robinson left for the NBA.
But entering the '95-96 campaign, the prospect of winning a third straight Big Ten title didn't seem promising.
"The coaching staff, we thought we were gonna be good," Keady said. "But we didn't know we were gonna bethatgood."
Purdue opened the season with a 91-76 loss to Memphis. But the Boilermakers would reel off victories in 14 of their next 15 games. Their only loss in that stretch was against No. 2 Villanova in Anaheim, Calif.
"We were in that John Wooden tournament, and we had to play an early game— it was like 11 a.m.— but we weren't flying out until the next afternoon," said Todd Foster, a senior guard on that team. "Coach said, 'Hey, if you come out, play hard and win this game, you'll have the afternoon off and you can go to Disneyland.'
"So we were all pumped up, and we came out and we got our butts kicked. It was embarrassing. And I remember we got back to the hotel and coach grounded us. It was just miserable. We had talks among the players in each other's rooms and there was finger-pointing, but it was good to get everything out and talk."
Foster said that experience kicked Purdue into gear.
The Boilermakers won the next 10 straight, including a 4-0 start in conference play. One of those four wins was a 24-point blowout of No. 10 Iowa at Mackey Arena in the Big Ten opener.
"We played team ball," said Chad Austin, a sophom*ore guard and the Boilers' leading scorer (12.8 ppg). "Whoever was hot, that's who we were going to in any particular game."
That included sophom*ore center Brad Miller (9.6 ppg), senior forwardBrandon Brantley (8.8 ppg), senior forward Roy Hairston (8.3 ppg),senior forward Justin Jennings (8.1 ppg),senior guard Porter Roberts(7.9 ppg) and Foster (7.5 ppg).
A staple of Keady-coached teams was defensive intensity, but the '95-96 group took it to another level, finishing 29th in the country in points allowed per game (64.3).
"(Keady) always said you work hard on defense, and you rest on offense," Austin said. "You make mistakes on defense, it's a problem. That was the mindset from the beginning."
Purdue lost its next two games, to Illinois at home and at Penn State. The Boilermakers then started another streak, winning the next 11. Eight games into that run, they clinchedtheir third consecutive conference title. And they did it in memorable fashion.
"All of us had that in our minds, that we could wrap up the Big Ten at Indiana," Austin said. "With the rivalry, that's icing on the cake. We knew it. They knew it. Just doing it (at Assembly Hall), it was just adding to the rivalry."
Austin hit a game-winning 3-pointer with 13.7 seconds leftto lift Purdue to a74-72 win.
"It was always special to beat Indiana at Indiana because it was so difficult," said Keady. "Bobby Knight was a Hall of Fame coach and the fans all hated Purdue and Purdue hated Indiana."
Keady and Knight did not hateeach other, Keady says. In fact, Keady confided in Knight at times.
"I always felt bad because I never took Purdue to the Final Four," said Keady. "I told Bob one time. He said, 'Timeout. Maybe it's not your fault. Maybe it's your players.'
"Any problem we had as a team, I always blamed myself. So that made me feel a little better."
Keady got Purdue as far as the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament in 1994 and 2000. The 1993-94 team, with Robinson leading the way, took on Duke in the Southeast Regional final. Two days earlier, Robinson scored 44 points in a Sweet 16 win over No. 13 Kansas.
But against Duke, Robinson scored just 13 points and Purdue lost69-60.
"The players told me at practice(after the win over Kansas) that Glenn had a bad back because (Kansas center) Greg Ostertag fell on him and the back stiffened up on him," Keady said."I found out like a year later that what happened was, one of our players and Glenn were wrestling in their hotel room the night before the Duke game, and Glenn wrenched his back. They didn't have the guts enough to tell me, because they knew I'd kill him."
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With the 1994 loss to Duke fresh in their minds, the Boilermakers returned to the NCAA tournament the next season, but after narrowly defeating Green Bay (49-48) in the first round, Purdue lost to Memphis (75-73).
The 1995-96 group went on to finish the season with a 26-6 overall recordand a 15-3 mark in the Big Ten. Purdue had earned a No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament.
"I think we peaked in the IU game," Foster said. "And then it felt like things started to head down; our practices weren't as good as they should've been and I felt like we kind of went downhill from there."
After surviving 16th-seeded Western Carolina, 73-71, the Boilermakers fell to eighth-seeded Georgia76-69.
"Jud Heathcote said to me once: 'Sometimes Coach, coaching sucks,' " Keady said with a laugh. "But I loved it. I did it 55 years. I must've loved it."
In the 1995-96 season, Keady coached a group different from any he had ever guided to that point, or thereafter.
"When I took that third (Big Ten) trophy, I thought, 'How the hell'd we do that?' " he said. "That type of thing doesn't happen often in coaching. It's the only time it happened to me in 55 years."
