To be honest, I think the 2017-18 Boilers were better than the 2018-19 team, despite not winning a share of the B1G regular season, not winning the BTT, and not getting past the S16. While the 2018-19 won a share of the B1G regular season and made it to the Elite Eight and was a fluke play away from the Final Four.
2017-18 was just a complete team, with experience and high BBIQ at every position. Oh, and Haas was damn near unguardable on the block, while being surrounded by 4 players who shot 40%+ from 3PT. It was total pick-your-poison. Double Haas? Shooters will kill you. Single-cover Haas? Yeah, good luck with that. The only team that I saw truly defend Haas one-on-one was MSU, and they had Schilling [IIRC] basically playing football with him trying to drive him out to the elbow instead of on letting him establish on the block. Haas was second only to Carsen in USG%, was shooting 62% from the floor, 75% from the stripe (>5 attempts/game), and anchored the offense.
Only team in Purdue history to win 30 games. I think had Haas not gone down in the tourney with an injury, it changes the story.
2018-19 was interesting. It was far more athletic top-to-bottom. Even when Carsen was in a slump, other guys stepped up and Purdue kept winning. But the team revolved around Carsen. Heck, the team was great at offensive rebounding because 4 players could be setting up to get ORB when they knew Carsen was going to be jacking up so many shots. The team worked as a team because you had one superstar and guys around him who could flourish with him taking so much defensive attention, but it was not always balanced basketball.
The 2018-19 was exciting as hell to watch. The 2017-18 team was more like Alabama football. They were going to just do their boring thing of working everything through the post and dare you to stop them, slowly strangling you as your bigs get tired from dealing with trying to defend Haas while 4 other guys just start raining down threes over your heads.