Purdue special teams coordinator James Shibest has been labeled as one of the top coordinators in the country for his work with the third phase of the game, and will look to bring that success with him to West Lafayette.

Shibest met with the media last week to discuss what Purdue has in the kicking game, his philosophy on special teams, trust between himself and Barry Odom and more.

"Well, I mean, right now Spencer's coming back from last year, and he was a true freshman, and I know he struggled at times, but really, he's our only kicker. We do have a couple guys. It's kind of interesting that we had a little tryout, and we actually had a couple quality guys that we can talk about later for spring ball, just to hopefully push Spencer and give us just some more legs to not get too tired. So them guys could come involved more later or into the summer, but our plans right now is to go find a kicker in the spring, hopefully an experienced guy through the portal, to come compete for the job."

"We brought in Sam Dubwig, who was a backup at Arkansas that I was familiar with, recruiting him when I was at UNLV. Has a lot of talent, still young. He's here with Bennett (Boehnlein) right now, who's been here for three years now. So we'll have to evaluate that situation through the spring and see where we're at if we need to move."

"This number with the 105 is a little concerning, you know, for most special team coaches around the country, because typically, I've had eight guys on the roster. Now kind of the numbers kind of set around the country at six. Some people may stretch it to seven. You know, I've even heard people go to five. So how we balance that is going to be, I think, really, really important, when it comes to that number. So, I've never been through it, so it'll be probably experiencing on the move a little bit too."

"Well, I mean, it all comes down to personnel, right? Regardless of if it's offense, defense or in the kicking game. In the past, we've always tried to use good balance, and what I mean by that is, your starters, for the most part, will be heavily involved in at least two of the special teams, the four between punt, punt return, kickoff and kickoff return. Obviously, punt is so critical, so that'll involve a lot of defensive starters at times, but I think you got to have a core of guys that are backups, hopefully in that eight to 12 range that you're counting on to be heavily involved with all four units. And then we really search for guys that may not be scholarship guys, or maybe this is their only role. They're not a backup on defense or offense. I think it builds great team chemistry, and we've been able to kind of mesh them guys all together to put good units out there. So we train a lot of them and eval a lot of them, and that'll be big in the spring, and our drill work, just like you brought up, is they do correlate to defensive football or offensive football at times. So we're getting value within sides of the ball also, but we try to have good balance, but we're going to play the best we can put out there. Now, some of these guys get gassed a little easier than others, and some can run all day, as far as the starters. So you've got to eval that through the spring and fall camp."

"Well, first of all, you got to have the time to work on things. Usually start with a base three to four fakes and whatever one we installed in fall camp, and we kind of choose to the looks that we're getting for the week. Coach Odom is a gambler, which is awesome. A lot of these guys, man, they just want to get the ball out of there and don't take no risk. So a lot of it depends on how it looks throughout the week and the execution with that. But we'll have different gadget things going into every game, so he allows us to work on them, which is very important, because if you don't, they usually don't have much success, and they can be game changers when they do work. Now, all the calls go through coach Odom, so that way, if they don't work, I always kind of look at him, but because he's always pulling on me to call them and ask me if they're there early in the game after we get a picture of the opponent."

"He tells you like it is. He's straightforward with our team, with our coaches, with what he says, you can believe, and there's a trust factor there that I think is really, really important. The bottom line is, if you want success, you got to go work for it. You know, it takes great sacrifices and great dedication. You gotta build pride into your team and your school and your fans. And he's just got a way of doing that and I just know the way, what he says is the way, it's going to be. And he don't leave that. You know you either get it done or you don't get it done, you either win or you lose. And we got a lot of work to do, and our teams got to understand the work we've got to put in to go have success. But he's awesome to work for. He's also a very good friend of mine, and that's the reason I'm here and feel so blessed that Purdue has brought me here, and I know we're all thankful and we look forward to to future successes and sharing them with everybody."