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basketball Edit

Get to know more about Martin

Brian Neubert covers Purdue basketball for GoldandBlack.com. Missouri's new coach, Cuonzo Martin, was a star player and an assistant at Purdue. We talked to Neubert about what Mizzou is getting with Martin.

Cuonzo is one of the more well known players from Purdue in my lifetime. What's his legacy as a player in West Lafayette and how is he remembered by fans?

Neubert: He's certainly one of the more popular and most respected players of the modern era at Purdue. A lot of that has to do with what he turned himself into as a player and all that he overcame. He might be one of the greatest personal-improvement stories the school has ever seen, because he just simply turned himself into a great shooter on the fly during his career. He made all of zero threes on seven tries his first two seasons, then made 88 on 45-percent shooting his third year and 91 on 47-percent shooting his last year. That's pretty amazing. And he did it despite the aftermath of major knee injuries he'd suffered prior.

As much, he's remembered at Purdue as an outstanding leader who was really sort of the face of what that program aimed to be all about in this days. He was who was a big-time effort guy despite limitations and a big-time competitior, an integral part of two Big Ten championship teams under Gene Keady.

Years later, of course, he beat cancer. No one around Purdue was surprised when he did, but it just added to his legend, I guess you'd say, around his alma mater.

Later, Martin was an integral part of of Matt Painter's first few staffs at Purdue, in years where the program surged back after bottoming out in Keady's final years. Those first few Painter teams were known for effort and the way they defended, true to Purdue's long-time identity under Keady. I always though Martin's intensity and energy was a crucial element to the way those teams played, and the fact that players respected him so much really added to his value in those days.

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