Mar. 25—SAN JOSE, Calif. — Matt Painter straddles the halfcourt line at SAP Center, monitoring what's happening at both ends of the floor during an open practice session one day before Purdue's Sweet 16 matchup against Texas.
As he begins to fixate his eyes on a 3-on-3 drill taking place at one end, Painter delivers a set of instructions to the Boilermakers' 6-foot-11, 255-pound center.
"Strong chest, OC! Strong chest, OC!" Painter shouts.
"OC" being Oscar Cluff, the well-traveled senior center who had a stop-in at Washington State before transferring to South Dakota State and then Purdue, where he's been a 37-game starter for a second-seeded Boilermakers team that's making its return to the Sweet 16 against 11th-seeded Texas on Thursday (4:10 p.m., CBS).
When Purdue lost two-time national player of the year Zach Edey in 2024, the Boilermakers didn't address the 7-foot hole in their starting lineup immediately. Instead they elected to go small, deploying 6-foot-9 forward Trey Kaufman-Renn as a starting "5" last season, finding varying levels of success during a 2024-25 campaign that ended in the Sweet 16 with a narrow 62-60 loss to Houston.
Deciding he needed another 7-foot-something space-eater underneath the basket, Painter turned to the transfer portal where Cluff was one of the best bigs available coming off a standout season at South Dakota State, where he earned All-Summit League first-team honors after averaging a double-double of 17.6 points and 12.3 rebounds.
"His college coach called us in February to one of my assistants and said he was definitely going to leave (SDSU) and he wanted a place that, you know, from a low-post standpoint, but he wanted to go somewhere where they needed him," Painter said Wednesday from the SAP Center. "So we played (Kaufman-Renn) as an undersized 5 the year before, and we didn't have the rim protection and the overall rebound position even though we did get to the Sweet 16.
"So it was just a perfect fit for us. But he's been great. He's been great. He works hard. He does a lot of dirty work for us, can rebound the ball, can pass the ball. That's something I didn't know, how good of a passer he was. But very unselfish player."
Call it the next unplanned stage of a journey that hasn't unfolded the way Cluff planned, but better than he could've expected.
"It was always the goal, but I never imagined it," Cluff said of reaching this stage of the NCAA Tournament with a Purdue team that opened the year with a No. 1 national ranking. "It was something that was kind of so far out of reach at that point, now it's just surreal."
Cluff moved to the United States from Australia in 2021-22 to pursue a junior college career at Arizona-based Cochise College. Washington State coach Kyle Smith and assistant Jim Shaw identified Cluff through a longstanding relationship with Cochise coach Jerry Carrillo.
The bruising center who grew up on the Sunshine Coast of Australia braved a chilly, snowy Pullman winter in 2023 — "it was different, it was tough," Cluff laughed — and gained confidence from winning occasional practice battles with WSU's stable of experienced bigs led by springy forward Isaac Jones, who's spent the last two years with the NBA's Sacramento Kings and Detroit Pistons.
"That was fun, we'd go at each other every day," Cluff said. "He helped me get better."
Cluff became a regular starter for a WSU team that made the school's first NCAA Tournament since 2008 and was planning to spend two seasons in Pullman before Smith accepted the same position at Stanford. Cluff entered the transfer portal and quickly trimmed his list down to two schools.
Washington State and South Dakota State.
A return to the Palouse was still on the table for Cluff, but the Jackrabbits made a stronger push for the center, indicating he'd be a focal point of their offense. New WSU coach David Riley showed some interest, but Cluff didn't feel his game would be highlighted the same way in Pullman and didn't want to take the chance on a first-year coaching staff in what he presumed was his final season of eligibility.
"They were kind of like half-recruiting me, if you could say that," Cluff said. "They were like, 'Yeah, we want you back,' but not like, 'Oh, we need you back.' That's kind of where South Dakota State came in like, 'We need you.' He's going to trust me more."
Cluff signed at SDSU, moving to another small college town in a remote area of the county — a trend that's unintentionally followed the center through his career in the U.S.
Cluff moved from a warm, touristy beach town in Australia to Cochise College in Sierra Vista, Arizona, a smaller desert city that lists a population of 45,308 people. After two years, he moved on to Pullman, home to an estimated 33,543 residents in 2024, and then to a more isolated area of the country in Brookings, South Dakota, which lists a population of approximately 24,000.
For at least another few months, Cluff's home is West Lafayette, Indiana, a rural college town with roughly 45,000 residents.
"Not really, it's not been one of my emphases," Cluff said of finding schools in smaller towns. "(They're) all basketball-focused. (Purdue) is different than every other school I've been at but it's just being able to fit in wherever you go. Because everywhere's going to be different. If you can fit it in with a system better, it'll help you."
The fit has been as good as Cluff could've hoped. He's averaging 10.1 ppg and 7.5 rpg for the Boilermakers and was a factor in NCAA Tournament victories over Queens and Miami, scoring nine points with 11 rebounds, five assists and four blocks in the team's opener.
"I think right away just playing 5-on-5 pickup in the summer, you notice how skilled he is and how talented he is," Purdue guard Fletcher Loyer said. "Then obviously you start to learn the system and go down a little bit. Just because you're figuring out how to fit in and how to play, but ultimately you knew he had the skill and you knew he'd eventually figure it out and I think now he's been playing his best basketball, so it's huge for us."
It hasn't hurt to play with an accomplished point guard like Braden Smith, who became the NCAA career assists leader last week against Queens.
"We have meetings, team, player meetings at the beginning of the year, just what each individual player wants to accomplish personally for the team, all that stuff, and his was just to be the best rebounder in the country," Smith said of Cluff. "He shows signs of that every single game. He really works hard towards that."
Cluff still reflects on his time at WSU and acknowledged he'd watched the video of former teammate Dylan Darling's NCAA Tournament buzzer-beater for St. John's at least a dozen times.
"I sent him a text after," Cluff said. "It's cool."
Situated roughly 20 miles from the Sweet 16 venue in San Jose, Kyle Smith, Shaw and other members of Stanford's staff were planning to make a short drive to San Jose to see Cluff before Thursday's games at the SAP Center.
The senior center keeps in touch with members of WSU's talented 2023-24 team — a group that included Jones and Jaylen Wells, who's now with the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies.
Cluff and Darling are still alive in the NCAA Tournament, center Rueben Chinyelu won the 2025 national championship at Florida and three other members of the 2023-24 Cougars parlayed their success into high-major opportunities, including Andrej Jakimovski (Colorado), Myles Rice (Indiana/Maryland) and Isaiah Watts (Maryland).
"It's cool to see what they're all doing, how good that team really was," Cluff said. "You didn't really think about it at the time, but now it's like, we had a loaded team."
