As was said by others, only upset once, which led to my confusion and the question.
It’s interesting because at a point, I personally started moving away from the upset worry, simply because if you have positive seeds and tend to feel the good teams, it becomes harder and harder not to get upset unless you make the final four. Basically, almost all of the upset-ability is contained within being a bad seed.
But that was a journey I had to go on because UW kept getting good seeds and made it every damn year
Yeah, same for me... I understand that upsets occur, but upsets in the first round when you're a 5 or better are embarrassing, and get progressively more embarrassing the better your own seed. Those are the ones that I hate. Purdue lost as a 4 to North Texas last year, and as a 5 to UALR back in 2016. Those are the ones that sting. But it happens.
The question is whether Holtmann had built enough goodwill to survive a few of those? For Painter, his teams have been to the NCAAT 12 times, he's been bounced in the first round 3 of those times, and only two were upsets; the other Purdue was the #9 and lost to the #8.
Purdue has played to seed in 2008, 2010, 2015, and 2017.
Purdue has technically played above seed in 2007 (#9 beat #8 in R64 before losing to #1 in R32), 2009 (#5 beat #4 in R32 before losing to #1 in S16), 2012 (#10 beat #7 in R64 before losing to #2 in R32), and 2019 (#3 beat #2 in S16 before losing to #1 in E8).
Purdue played well below seed in 2011 (#3 losing to #11 in R32), 2016 (#5 losing to #12 in R64) and 2021 (#4 losing to #13 in R64). Technically they played below seed in 2018 (#2 lost to #3 in S16), but that was the year that Isaac Haas was injured in the R64, so I believe we were no longer really a #2 after that injury.
I'd say playing to seed 1/3 of the time, above seed 1/3 of the time, and below seed 1/3 of the time, is certainly not terrible. And that's what Holtmann has done, albeit in very limited sample size.
I certainly wouldn't look at Holtmann's NCAAT history as justify firing him. Now, if you believe that he's got the trajectory of the program headed the wrong direction, as evidenced by falling further and further back in B1G regular season standings, it's a different story. In that case, his NCAAT certainly hasn't been enough to justify keeping him either.