GLENDALE, Ariz. — Rarely does one reach the mountaintop on the first try, without strain or pain. More often, one must suffer the humiliation of being knocked back to the bottom, to scramble upward again.

“When you go through what we went through as a team, it either makes or breaks you,” said Zach Edey, Purdue’s mountain of a young man. “It either breaks you, or you come out stronger on the other side.”

For Purdue and UConn, climbers set to do battle at the top of the college basketball mountain Monday night, ascension followed hard March Madness setbacks with the world watching. The UConn men were stunned in the first round by a No. 12 seed, New Mexico State in 2022, blowing up a promising season, throwing the program off course after four years of steady progress under coach Dan Hurley.

After overhauling his roster, Hurley led the Huskies to the championship last season and they have never looked back. They have won 11 consecutive tournament games, every one by at least 10 points.

Purdue, a sturdy team that annually withstands the big, physical teams in the Big Ten Conference, took a much more ignominious defeat under unforgiving microscope of March. A No.1 seed headed to the Final Four on nearly everyone’s bracket, the Boilermakers were beaten by a No. 16 seed, Fairleigh Dickinson, in the first round of 2023.

FDU wasn’t even supposed to be in the tournament; the actual winner of its conference, Merrimack, was ineligible because it hadn’t been in Division I long enough. FDU, which lost to UHart and Central Connecticut during the season, ended up in the Round of 16.

“I don’t think it will stay with me through the year, I think it will stay with me forever,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said before this season began.

The only other top seed to lose to a bottom seed was Virginia, to Maryland-Baltimore County in 2018. The next season, Virginia won the national championship. That’s the climb the Boilermakers will try to complete Monday night. UConn is chasing history; Purdue redemption.

“You just try to keep working, try to be honest about your mistakes, try to be honest about just everything,” Painter said Sunday. “It’s an inexact science at times, especially from a recruiting standpoint. Learn from your tough losses and don’t run from ’em, face ’em. That’s what we’ve tried to do. We’ve been to that second weekend a lot, but we haven’t been able to get through it.”

Losses like Purdue’s to FDU can be career-changing, and not in a good way. From one of the nation’s most avid basketball states, Purdue has long been one of the great brands in the college game. When UConn first aspired to be big-time in the sport, in 1937, it took a weeklong trip to Illinois, Indiana and Purdue and was crushed all three games.

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