On Miami (Ohio) schedule, Matt Painter is right — and the right person to say it

ST. LOUIS — Matt Painter did what Matt Painter does so well and so eloquently, Friday night, when he offered maybe the most measured response yet to the debate about high-major responsibility for mid-major needs . It was not just the message, but the man, that made his comments so important.

Travis Steele’s remarkable undefeated regular season this winter with Miami (Ohio) reignited what has become an annual discussion over how mid-majors are supposed to game the analytics that make or break your NCAA Tournament resume when they struggle for quality nonconference games. It reappears every year but got particularly heated this time around, because of 1) the extreme nature of Miami’s success, 2) the RedHawks’ pedestrian nonconference schedule and 3) the wider question of whether high-majors have a duty to give mid-majors the chance to beef those schedules up.

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Advocating in the weeks leading into Selection Sunday for his team — in the event it did not win the MAC’s automatic bid — Steele suggested repeatedly the RedHawks could not find high-major programs to schedule them. Yet Painter’s Purdue stands as a direct contradiction to that.

“If he was in our position,” Painter said, “he’d be doing the same thing.”

It was important for Painter to speak when and as he did. In a debate that, like so much in modern sports, became too rapidly zero sum, Purdue’s veteran coach was the perfect voice for the argument he delivered. It was not just what he said, but that he was the one who said it.

Particularly because he’s right.

Purdue disproves Miami Ohio's scheduling argument

Miami’s argument struggles to hold water precisely because of programs like Painter’s Purdue.

It’s not that the RedHawks cannot find high-major opponents — they played six over Steele’s first three years in Oxford. It’s that they could not find the right partners this time.

Purdue, by way of relevant example, played two MAC teams (Akron and Kent State) ranked in the KenPom top 175 this season. Indiana played Miami itself twice in the three seasons previous to this one. Kent State found takers in both Auburn and Alabama in 2024-25, and Toledo has played Houston, Purdue and Michigan State all in the past two years.

What Miami could not find were high-major teams that wanted Miami . What Miami did not add were mid-major teams that might.

Consider their contemporaries again. Toledo scheduled eventual NCAA Tournament teams Wright State and Troy this year. Ohio added Illinois State and St. Bonaventure. Akron played (and lost to) Yale and Murray State, and still sits more than 20 places higher in KenPom today than Miami.

Steele, to his credit, also scheduled Wright State, beating the Raiders in December in Dayton. As of Saturday afternoon, that was the only nonconference opponent Miami played this season better than No. 243 in Pomeroy’s rankings. Akron played four teams ranked comfortably higher than that. For Kent State, that number was six.

“You are going to do what is best for your institution, so you can get in the tournament and help your seed,” Painter said. “We’ve played mid-majors, but everybody plays mid-majors. Every high-major plays mid-majors. They’re just saying they’re not playing them , and it’s really a backhanded compliment.”

Coaches' first loyalty is to their programs

This isn’t a criticism of Miami, really. It reads like one but it isn’t.

Steele did try to schedule harder — Matt Brown covered a number of high-majors the RedHawks approached, in his excellent Extra Points newsletter — but, presented his options, made a different call eventually.

That was a choice, just the same as the teams that told Miami no. And it left the RedHawks battling the computers when there might have been another way.

“I didn't set the NET rankings. The NET rankings set themselves,” Painter said. “But I'm gonna go by it. Like, I'm gonna figure it out.”

This is where the argument gets tricky. What duty of care does Purdue owe Miami? Or Illinois, Toledo? Or Michigan, Kent State?

Yes, the climate is worsening for mid-major coaches and programs. Not just in scheduling but in roster construction, retention and development, and therefore in the fundamental effort to exist. And yes, too many power-conference coaches are quick to turn vulturous when they see high-major solutions on mid-major rosters.

But there’s also a proverbial continental divide here, when the merits of the argument reverse flow from one direction to the other. Balancing atop it is a delicate exercise.

The natural distillation of Painter’s position is correct. Coaches have to do what’s best for their programs.

Not wanting to schedule Miami specifically — in a season when the RedHawks outperformed expectations to become something so extreme no one could have anticipated it — does not make them villains. It makes them responsible. And Miami’s own conference rivals showed it’s still possible to beef up your numbers in other ways.

“You’ve got to get wired to do what's best for the NET,” Painter said. “When you're a mid-major guy and you say those things, and now you get a high-major job, you've got to be careful. You're talking with a forked tongue there.”

His argument travels in both directions. The “bozos” (a word he used) Painter refers to aren’t just mid-major coaches, but also high-major colleagues who schedule too softly and then find themselves short of opportunities come March.

That didn’t apply to Steele’s team this year. Armed with a nonconference schedule strength ranked in the 360s nationally, Miami entered the field of 68 this month as the lowest-ranked at-large team in both KenPom and the NET, then won a game once it got there.

Schedule be damned.

Why Matt Painter was the right voice for this

This is why Painter is the right person to deliver this argument.

He has been a mid-major coach. He built Purdue from the foundations after taking over from Gene Keady. His Boilermakers consistently seek tough nonconference schedules full stop, and don’t shy away from playing the MAC’s best. He’s talking now as his team sits among the favorites to reach this year’s Final Four.

Which is why it’s important he said what he did. From a different coach, the same argument might have rang hollow or sounded petty. From Painter, who has seen the game from both sides and has the bonafides to back him up, it was pitch perfect.

He also knows he’s not alone, which is why (whether he meant to or not) he was speaking for more coaches than just himself.

“I know Michigan played good people. I know Michigan State played good people,” Painter said. “The people that are looking to move their seed line are looking at that stuff. Some people aren't that way.”

College basketball has plenty of problems. Some were foreseeable. Some are correctable.

This is not necessarily one of those, in large part because Miami got the opportunity it deserved anyway. It didn’t matter who told the RedHawks no, and it didn’t matter they lost in their first game in the MAC Tournament. They got their chance and did something with it.

Like so much else in college basketball, scheduling resembles art as much as math. Painter is right: It can be approached scientifically, especially in the analytics era. But just as one data point does not make a trend, one team’s experience doesn’t create a crisis.

Miami enjoyed an outstanding season in 2026, with or without high-major help. But the RedHawks were never obliged that, nor were they deprived of it for some sinister purpose, and Painter was right — and the right person — to say it.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Matt Painter says Miami Ohio's schedule was problem of their making