For a guy averaging more than nine assists per game, Purdue’s Braden Smith had to wait for the most momentous of his career.
He actually hit two shots before recording his first assist, and his teammates missed three shots that would have given him another. When it finally came, his second was a first in basketball history.
Smith fed Trey Kaufman-Renn cutting down the lane seven minutes into No. 2 Purdue’s first-round game against No. 15 Queens on Friday in a West Region game in St. Louis, provoking an unusual roar for a bucket that gave the Boilermakers a 17-12 lead.
“The crowd went crazy and I thought it was from my Euro step, but I guess it wasn’t,” Kaufman-Renn said.
Combined with his earlier assist on Oscar Cluff’s fast-break layup, it was the 1,077th of Smith’s four-year career at Purdue, passing Duke’s Bobby Hurley for the most in Division I history. And with that, one of the most enduring records in college basketball finally fell, one that stood so long that Smith was born a decade after it was set, even if his beard makes him look older than Hurley.
“I don’t think it’s really set in because to me, again, it’s my job,” Smith said after recording eight assists and 26 points in an easy 104-71 win. “It’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s why I came here. As a point guard, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to get guys the ball to go score, and obviously I have a lot of great people around me who can do that. For me, it’s my job to put them in positions to go score.”
It was 33 years to the day since Hurley’s final assist, his ninth in a second-round NCAA Tournament loss to California on March 20, 1993, and with all the changes in the sport since then, it was fair to wonder if that was one line in the record book that would remain unchanged forever.
Times change. Games change. Styles change. Technology changes. Society changes. This may not be like the steroid-fueled chase of Roger Maris’ home run record, or quarterbacks piling up exponentially more passing yards thanks to rules favoring the offense, but college basketball unquestionably has changed since Hurley played.
The conditions needed to break the record — a talented point guard staying for four years while running an offense designed to concentrate the ball in the hands of one player — seemed to have evaporated long ago. The players good enough to set a record like this move on quickly now, as do their best teammates. Chemistry was at a premium even before the transfer portal era.
And pro-influenced positionless offenses now revolve around the 3-point shot instead of the kind of post-up opportunities for back-to-the-basket big men that led to ready assists for distributing point guards. Hurley was surrounded by some of the best talent ever assembled on a college court.
Of the top 15 players on the all-time list, only one finished his career in the past 20 years. Since 1993, the overall assist rate has fallen across college basketball, per figures compiled by Ken Pomeroy. And maybe not coincidentally for Smith, scoring is back to where it was when Hurley played.
That’s where Smith landed in the sweet spot. A cerebral and creative passer gifted enough to star in the Big Ten but not so talented that the NBA came calling, playing in an older-school offense that still relies on elite big men. Players like Zach Edey and Kaufman-Renn can do amazing things near the basket, but they still need someone to get them the ball there.
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Enter Smith, who developed a graduate-level understanding of the pick-and-roll concepts in coach Matt Painter’s offense as well as improbable chemistry with the post players he fed, amassing numbers beyond predecessors like Carsen Edwards and Lewis Jackson.
“He was able to stay and keep growing and keep getting better,” Painter said. “Now he’s chasing history from an individual standpoint. It’s also something that we share with him because these are passes that other people have to make shots. … Things run together, with Ed Cota at North Carolina and Chris Corchiani at NC State and Bobby Hurley at Duke; one of you guys needs to write a story about all the people that have the most field goals.
“Because I know our guys – Trey Kaufman-Renn, Zach Edey, Fletcher Loyer – and the guys that had the most field goals for them, I’m pretty sure you’re going to have really, really good names there that they had to pass. You can’t get the record if people can’t make baskets. Just because you’re a good passer, you pass to a bunch of bozos that can’t shoot, you’re not getting that award. It’s not happening.”
This was on full display in Purdue’s win over Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament championship game, where Smith and Kaufman-Renn worked their two-man game to perfection, Smith’s pocket passes putting Kaufman-Renn in position for his preferred pull-up jumper. Michigan never could guard it right.
“We started working on it, and we just clicked,” Smith said. “Obviously he trusts me to get it to him, and I trust him to catch it and then obviously go make a play or make passes or score out of it. Obviously when you have a play, not necessarily a play but a short roll like that that we’re able to get some mileage out of, it helps.”
Smith hasn’t had the same team success Hurley had — few have – but he still has time to write another chapter in his Purdue career. After the historic first-round upset at the hands of Fairleigh Dickinson when he was a freshman, Smith and the Boilermakers went to the national-title game the next season, losing to Connecticut. Purdue made it to the Sweet Sixteen last season, and won the second Big Ten Tournament title of Smith’s career last week. The record secured, and now standing at 1,083, the end of his college career looms now, one way or another.
“I think for me it is just playing the game you love,” Smith said. “It is just something you enjoy doing every single day. So I have never really got out of that, or got away from that. It is just continuing to compete and get better. Obviously, as a basketball player, you try to improve every year and every single day. I feel like that’s just really what it is.”
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