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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2 20 ever one it pointed to I was going to do, and it pointed to go back to school my first year and so I did, and this last year it pointed to go to the NBA, so I did. I separated emo- tion from both decisions." Q. And you made good strides defensively from Year 1 to Year 2 at Purdue. Swanigan: "It helped me a lot, just being able to play the 5 and the 4 and even at Purdue sometimes, I had to guard a lot of guards. That right away, getting those reps, you can't do it any other way, you can't drill it, you've got to just do it in a game full speed." Q. Do you appreciate this role on this team, where you're coming off the bench to do some of the dirty work? Swanigan: "That's really what I want to do, especially on a team where I'm not the main guy. The pressure isn't on me. If I play bad, we still can win the game, so being in that role makes my job really easy." — As told to Kyle Charters and other media on Oct. 20 in Indianapolis S o it's been a pretty weird past few months for col- lege basketball. First, the FBI — yes, that FBI — showed up at the door with a warrant, put a handful of assistant coaches behind bars, indirectly ousted Rick Pitino from his throne at Louisville and created an out-take from "The Wire" for every occasion, the best, or worst depending on your per- spective, probably still to come. Next, the NCAA punted after a years-long investigation into far-reaching, shameless and, in some ways, hilarious academic malfeasance at one of its flagship programs, North Carolina. The reason NCAA justice couldn't be handed down by the NCAA: NCAA rules, specifically the one that says the NCAA shall defer to the institution on matters of academic misconduct, a grotesque reflection of the NCAA's inability to credibly police itself. Add the two brouhahas together and it paints a bleak, dystopian picture of what college basketball actually is during those moments when Dick Vitale isn't bleating on TV in February and Enterprise, Allstate and Pizza Hut aren't bludgeoning you with advertisements in March. It ain't pretty, and now the curtain's been lifted by a pair of very ugly, very public ordeals. What does this have to do with Purdue? Nothing, except for providing something of a fitting backdrop for this season to come, and the team it will roll with these next few months. While college coaches nationwide keep their eyes open for flower-delivery vans parked conspicuously across the street — because the FBI does that, in case that was too subtle — Matt Painter lost not a moment of sleep. He's always operated by his own rules, a different kind of "own rules," though. A man must have a code and the one he adheres to puts him at a competitive dis- advantage, makes recruiting considerably more difficult, leads to considerable amounts of wasted time and energy and may even wear on fans a bit. Because of the way he's chosen to operate, he may never get to that elusive Final Four. Or he may, I don't know. If he does, he'd be bucking steep odds. Sept. 26 — the day the feds kicked down the door — was either a good day for college basketball or a terrible day, depending on your perspective. For Purdue, I can tell you this: It was a satisfying one, validation of sorts, a day where it all seemed worthwhile, on the eve of a season that'll see Purdue put on the floor a very good team built the right way. Purdue doesn't often get "name" recruits. What I mean here by "name" is that their names never have to redacted from some salacious document months later. I kid. Purdue got a rare redaction-level recruit recently, though. His name was Caleb Swanigan and we can say with confidence he came clean. The reasons Swanigan (reluctantly) chose Purdue have been well documented, and as part of SOP, the NCAA did look into the whole thing anyway, because of the unique circumstances. Swanigan's gone now, off to the NBA, and now the con- summate college basketball team remains to defend its Big In Chaos Comes Validation From Editor Brian Neubert