Purdue's seniors coming to terms with sudden end to careers

Already back home in Harrisburg a few days after his playing career at Purdue ended abruptly, Jahaad Proctor was invited Sunday to work out with some friends who'll be playing college basketball again whenever there's college basketball again.

"I was thinking, 'Oh my god, all you get to go back to school next year and I don't,'" Proctor said. "It's over with for me. I have moments like that where I think, 'Dang, I played my last game, and I didn't even get to know when my last game was."

Late last week, the sports world ground to a halt as COVID-19 spread. The college basketball postseason goes down as collateral damage, and with it, the careers of seniors nationwide. Proctor and classmate Evan Boudreaux now share that reality with scores of players like them.

"You want to be able to go out on the floor and at least say you got to play your last game and you gave it everything you had," Boudreaux said Friday, a day after his college career ended unceremoniously. "I didn't know Rutgers would be my last game. it is tough when it's taken away so suddenly, when you're getting ready to play a game and you think you can make another push. For that to be taken away through no fault of your own, it is hard."

And that reality came suddenly, albeit not by total surprise.

Purdue woke up Thursday morning, expecting to play, to meet Ohio State that evening at the Big Ten Tournament, but knowing the deal, aware that any outcome was possible. The Boilermakers were aware of all that was going on, that concern over the spread of COVID-19 was taking hold, and that anything could happen.

The prior evening, the NBA had suspended its season, after it came to light that two Utah Jazz players had contracted coronavirus. The Big Ten Tournament's second of two Wednesday games was an epicenter of angst, as Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg coached against Indiana while visibly ill, then was taken to the hospital. (He was later diagnosed with influenza A, not coronavirus.)

"We knew things were cascading and that things were happening that hadn't really happened before," Boudreaux said. "We were focused on playing the game, but at the same time we knew there was a pretty good chance we might not be able to get the chance to play it."

The prior evening, well before the Hoiberg optics took hold, the Big Ten announced that games would be played at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, but without general-public spectators present.

Purdue had just finished its game-day shootaround at the Irsay Family YMCA just down the street from the arena. Players were shooting their end-of-practice free throws when e-mails, tweets, etc., started coming through announcing the cancelation.

The Boilermakers found out the Big Ten Tournament was off pretty much as the public did.

"We just kind of sat there in the YMCA for a little bit, and it took a long time to process," Boudreaux said. "It was tough. It all happened so suddenly, which I think was tough for some of us to deal with."

Hours later, the inevitable: After previously announcing that the NCAA Tournament would be played without spectators, the NCAA called the whole thing off.

The season was over.

How do you rationalize this when you're a senior?

"I think I still am," Boudreaux said on Friday.

"It was hard, hard to accept that you'd played your last game and didn't even know it. That's tough, because when you're playing in your last game and you know it's your last game, you can appreciate it more, go through the different range of emotions and prepare, but when it's taken from you suddenly, it's hard to cope with at the moment. I feel like as a team, we definitely could have gone farther and done more and at the end of the day, that's always going to be a what-if."

Make no mistake: Boudreaux and Proctor get it.

If any college basketball player should grasp the gravity of the moment better than most, it's probably Boudreaux. His mother, Gail, is the president and CEO of the health insurer Anthem, Inc. Suffice to say, she's been particularly busy lately.

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Proctor, though, said he and teammates may not have grasped the severity of the matter at first

"Obviously none of us go to school for health or anything like that so we're not experts," Proctor said. "We're just like anybody else, thinking, 'Maybe it's just like the flu and it can't be that bad.

"Then you do your research and read about it, and you really understand all the precautions."

Both players get it.

But you can understand and still experience a wide range of emotions because of it. Seniors nationwide have undoubtedly felt confusion, anger, sadness, frustration, the whole gamut.

In time, it'll turn to reflection.

Purdue didn't necessarily have the season it wanted to have, but its last best chance never played out, and that means anything remains forever possible.

That's little consolation.

Boudreaux leaves Purdue with no regrets.

"I don't think anybody can look back and say we didn't do the right things, we didn't give it our all or that we didn't do a good job representing Purdue or being Boilermakers," he said.

Both seniors have quite a story to tell at the very least. This global pandemic will be in textbooks one day. Proctor can cite a historical event for ending his college career. He chuckled at the thought.

"It's not ideal, but hey ..."

It was a bizarre ending to Proctor's one season at Purdue, and to Boudreaux's two, but both say this won't define their Boilermaker careers.

"I won't let it," Proctor said. It would just be the ending to the story. I had way too many good moments at Purdue that I can't let this overshadow that."

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