LOUISVILLE – In the old days, the television cameras wouldn’t have caught Gene Keady at a Purdue game of this magnitude. That Sweet 16 contest on Thursday night when the Boilermakers were trying – when Matt Painter was trying – to break through for the program’s first Elite Eight appearance since Ol’ Combover himself was in charge? Nah. Keady wouldn’t have done it. Wouldn’t have been there. He had too much respect for Painter.

How much respect? Imagine this:

It’s a few years after that 2005 transition from Keady, the winningest coach in Purdue history, to his former point guard. To Matt Painter. By now Painter has Purdue rolling, in the middle of six consecutive years with at least 22 wins and a trip to the NCAA Tournament. Somewhere in there, Keady comes back to Mackey Arena to watch practice.

Keady wasn’t going to be the kind of coach who hovered. He’s a humble man, so likeable that even his longtime IU rival Bob Knight came to adore him, but Keady understood – How could he not? – his place in Purdue basketball history. He knew the size of his shadow. He wanted only the best for his protégé, only sunshine, so he stayed away for a few years. But there he was back at Mackey about a decade ago, players walking onto Gene Keady Court, practice about to begin, and he doesn’t know where to be. Keady makes his decision.

He heads for the stairs.

Painter catches sight of Keady about 25 rows up, watching from near the concourse.

“Coach,” Painter tells Keady afterward, “you can come down and sit wherever you want.”

“No, Matt,” Keady says. “This is your team. I don’t want to interfere in any way.”

“Coach,” Painter says, “when your name’s on the floor, you get to sit wherever you want.”

Caught colorfully on national TV

There he was Thursday night. You saw 82-year-old Gene Keady, right? Television cameras loved him, sitting in the Purdue section near president Mitch Daniels and athletic director Mike Bobinski, a row above one of the best players he ever coached, Brian Cardinal. Keady’s wearing a Purdue pullover and a Purdue hat tugged low over his balding head, gray sideburns peeking out.

And Keady’s yelling.

“Make a free throw!” he’s shouting, perhaps in slightly more colorful language.

“Make a layup!” he’s shouting.

Keady’s not coaching up there, he’s telling me on Friday, still careful after all these years not to be seen as hovering. Just being a fan, he says. He’s going through the same emotions as so many Purdue fans at the KFC Yum! Center, where the Boilermakers coughed up an 18-point lead in the second half, only to force overtime on Ryan Cline's hot streak and on two Carsen Edwards free throws with 1.7 seconds left, then win it 99-94 in the extra session. But nobody else has that voice, that growl. And nobody’s safe, either.

“Tennessee goes on a (14-0) run, and he’s yelling at everybody,” Cardinal is saying Friday. “He’s yelling at me in the front row, and I’m not doing anything!”

You’re joking, I tell Cardinal.

“Oh absolutely he did,” Cardinal says. “’Come on Cardinal!’ What? What? ‘Make a free throw, Cardinal!’”

Cardinal starts playing along, taking off his coat and threatening to whip it into the crowd. He turns to his former coach, famous for that maneuver, and teases him: “Coach, you know what this means. You know what happens when the coat comes off. Let’s go! Let’s get fired up!”

Now Cardinal is smiling at Keady. He’s 6-8, is Brian Cardinal, and he reaches one of those long arms toward his former coach. He’s making a fist, and holding it there. Keady makes a fist. They bump knuckles.

And then they get back to the game. This is the program’s biggest night in almost 20 years, or it could be, if Matt Painter can do what he’s never done in 11 previous trips to the NCAA Tournament and get to the Elite Eight. And after that, perhaps, he will do what even his legendary mentor couldn’t do:

Perhaps Matt Painter will lead Purdue to the 2019 Final Four. That’s why Gene Keady is here in Louisville. He came here to see that.

"I want him to win so bad"

Keady is telling me a story about Painter. He’s protecting the innocent by not naming the opposing team, but he tells this story to explain the moment he knew Painter would be a coach.

“We were playing a particular team,” is how Keady starts it, and all he’ll do is assure me it wasn’t an opponent from the Big Ten. “I’d been trying to tell our players to be smarter, the right guy should be shooting the ball at critical times, get it into the right hands, that sort of thing. Well, we beat this team – oh my goodness, they had more talent than we did – but we beat them on their court, and after the game Matt says to me: ‘Coach, we finally found a team dumber than us.’ I kind of knew right then that he might be a pretty good coach.”

When Painter was named Big Ten Coach of the Year earlier this season, he became just the fourth coach to win that award four times, joining Keady (seven), Knight (five) and Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan (four). Painter is the only active coach younger than 55 with 12 NCAA Tournaments appearances, and he’s just 48. His career record (346-163 overall, 158-92 in the Big Ten), his Sweet 16’s (five) and league titles (three), all point to one of the best, most underappreciated coaches in college basketball.

But his resume has been missing something, the same thing that Gene Keady’s resume is missing. Keady never reached the Final Four in 25 Hall of Fame years at Purdue, though he did make a pair of Elite Eight appearances among his five trips to the Sweet 16. For Painter, Saturday’s game against Virginia will mark his first trip to a regional final.

“I don’t want to jinx it, so I don’t want to say much,” Keady says of Saturday’s game. “But I want him to keep winning. Of course I want it.”

Which makes the actual game so agonizing. When he was coaching, Keady had a semblance of control. He had a say. Sitting in the crowd like everyone else, he’s helpless. And that’s not just any Purdue coach he’s watching down there.

That’s Matt.

“I want him to win so bad, and it’s hard to sit there and take it,” Keady says. “It’s very special, like when your child is successful, and Matt is very patient to invite me around. I’m just proud of him. But it’s hard. It’s really hard.”

Which explains the language Thursday night that was, as I said, colorful. Language caught by TV cameras.

“I wasn’t aware I was on TV!” Keady’s booming at me. “And my wife is not very happy with me. I guess on some words, people can read lips. My mother would have called me from Sacramento if she was alive and chewed me out. I was not taught that way. But at the same time, it’s just me. I’m trying to be honest. I’m not happy about it, but I’m probably not going to change much. I want him to win.”

Does Keady regret no Final Four?

Even now, his fingerprints are all over this program, Painter gives credit where he feels it is due. He is standing on the shoulders of greatness. He wants us to understand: He knows that.

“I've always felt fortunate because we've had a blueprint on how to run a program,” Painter says Friday when asked about Keady. “Anybody can have a good team and get a couple good players. But to have a good program and have consistency and do things the right way and graduate your guys and still be successful on the court, that's what (Keady) established at Purdue, and that's what we're trying to continue.”

They talk by phone all the time. Purdue will win a game and Painter’s phone will buzz, and it’s Coach Keady calling from Myrtle Beach, S.C., offering congratulations. Keady keeps up with so many of his guys, calling Cuonzo Martin at Missouri and Bruce Weber at Kansas State several times a week. He calls the Purdue basketball offices at least that often. Not to give advice. But to ask: “How are we doing?”

If Painter and the Boilermakers reach the Final Four, Keady will be in Minneapolis with them, going where he never took the team himself. Which has me asking Keady a delicate question: Does he regret not reaching a Final Four of his own? Any regrets at all? He booms back a single word, then keeps going.

“None,” he says. “I had a great career. We graduated 92 percent of our kids, and I’m proud of that, and we won several championships, were in the NCAA Tournament 17 times. I have no regrets. I’ve had a great life.”

The years have been so sweet of late. Keady, a widower, married Kathleen Petrie in 2012. He retired to Myrtle Beach. And he comes back to Mackey Arena several times a year, even goes on the road with the Boilermakers for big games. He was at the NCAA Tournament last year for their Sweet 16 run, and he was at Northwestern on March 9 when Purdue clinched a share of its record 24th Big Ten regular-season title. He was in the locker room afterward, celebrating with players. When someone took out a camera for a team picture, Keady’s idea was to watch from a distance.

Matt Painter had another idea.

“Come on, Coach!” Painter said, and the photo circulating on social media from that night shows Purdue’s players and coaches surrounding the Big Ten trophy, and there he is on the front row, far right: There’s Gene Keady in his Purdue sweatshirt and his hat that reads: “2019 Big Ten champions.”

To those within the program, Keady’s inclusion is heartwarming and necessary. Elliot Bloom, Painter’s director of operations since 2008, mentions the players reunion Painter hosts every other year. This past August, more than 300 people showed up.

“We always talk about ‘Purdue family,’ and part of that is we’ve had two head coaches over a 40-plus year span,” says Bloom, who played at Mount Vernon. “I can’t tell you how many texts I got from former players (after the Tennessee game), and not just guys who played for Coach Painter, but who played here in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s. It just speaks to that whole dynamic between Coach Keady and Coach Painter. We have genuine love and respect for each other, but that all comes from Coach Keady and Coach Painter. They set the tone.”

Which is why some around the program want this Final Four for Purdue’s last coach as much as for this one. Cardinal was on that 2000 team when Purdue last played in a regional final. Wisconsin beat the Boilermakers that night, and Cardinal remembers crying his way through the postgame news conference. And he remembers why.

“I was up there, crying, an emotional wreck, because I wanted so bad to get Coach Keady there,” Cardinal says. “Because he means so much to me and to Purdue and everybody else. I’m hopeful that we can beat Virginia, get Coach Painter and the team and the university to the Final Four – but I’m hoping we can get there for Coach Keady because all that he has meant to this team and program, and the fact that Coach Painter has embraced that relationship. And I don’t know a lot of people who would be prouder to have him get Purdue to a Final Four than Coach Keady.”

Indeed, these were the former Purdue coach’s final words to me on Friday.

“I talk about how proud of him I am,” Gene Keady says of Matt Painter. “He knows.”

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.