On Dec. 19 the Boilermakers lost to Wofford 69-66 and followed that up with an 83-80 loss to Iowa State on Dec. 22. After the Wofford game, Painter came away with a different perspective on his young players.

“When we got beat by Wofford their head coach made a great statement for me to think about,” Painter said.

The coach told him, “You lose games when you have some talented guys, but they just don’t have a lot of experience … a simple by-product of youth is they’re not always dialed in.”

Painter took that to heart, and since he’s lowered expectations of his young players — who have continued to improve — the Boilermakers have won 11 of their last 12 games. Entering Thursday’s games, Purdue was tied for first in the Big Ten with a 9-1 league record.

Tubby’s take

Minnesota has already improved upon last season’s 9-22 mark and sports a 14-7 overall record in head coach Tubby Smith’s first season.

Even though the Golden Gophers have improved, Smith said his team has still had tough losses, and said that it’s important to see how his team responds.

“(We) come back in usually team and group meetings and talk about the things (we) have to get done,” Smith said of his agenda after a loss.

“You don’t want it to linger, so you try to address the issues as quickly as possible and get things out there. It’s not like it’s the last game of the season — and even if it were you just want to make sure the team knows that there’s plenty of opportunities (left).”

It’s not all bad in Evanston

With a winless conference record so far, it’s no stretch to say Northwestern is struggling. Still, even with an overall record of 7-13 and an 0-9 mark in the Big Ten, head coach Bill Carmody has seen some positives from his team and always lets them know it.

“When we show them the tapes we show them all the good things they do,” Carmody said. “They know pretty much what they did wrong — we show them those things, too, but try to emphasize some good things that they did just to keep their level of confidence up.”