Transfers sought opportunities at Purdue, but wanted to win, too
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A few times last season, Josh Okonye sat in his hotel room watching the Boilermakers play on TV.
They’d frequently be noon games, hours before his Wake Forest team was scheduled to play, so he got a good look at Purdue.
“I saw a team that could come to play but always got the short end of the stick and didn’t finish well,” said Okonye, who transferred from Wake following last season, then helped the Boilermakers to a 6-6 record and a bowl game this year. “I knew (a rebuild at Purdue) would be an uphill battle, but when I found out Jeff Brohm was coming here, I knew he was the right man for the job and I knew that gave us the best chance to turn around the program.”
It took, though, a bit of a leap for Okonye and Purdue’s 11 other incoming transfers (junior college, graduate and other) to choose the Boilermakers, considering where the program had been. But each of the dozen did so for his own reasons: Right tackle Dave Steinmetz, who had played at Rhode Island, wanted an opportunity on the bigger FBS stage; left guard Shane Evans wanted a chance to play — and start — at one position, rather than bouncing around as he did at Northern Illinois; Spencer Evans thought he could place-kick, along with kick off, after getting only the latter duties a couple years ago at Baylor; linebacker T.J. McCollum wanted to follow coordinator Nick Holt from Western Kentucky; Isaac Zico and Terry Wright sought instant-impact chances at wide receiver, preferably in a pass-heavy offense.
But all also wanted to win, as most do.
And at Purdue, that hadn’t happened, with the program winning only nine games in the previous four seasons combined.
“Somebody asked me, ‘Why would you chose Purdue over Washington State and West Virginia?’” Zico said, referring to other programs with more recent success. “But it’s not about the school’s talent or how good they are, it’s how you do and what you produce on the field that’s going to get you out there. I could have went to the MAC or Conference USA or anywhere that had a winning team, but I just wanted to come be a part of history. I knew Coach Brohm — he recruited me well — so I wanted to come here and be a part of something special.”
Spencer Evans, who had sat out a year while taking classes at UT-Arlington, saw similar draws to West Lafayette. The Texas native was recruited by special teams guru Tony Levine, a former head coach at Houston, who sold him on the future. Purdue's past was its past, but it wasn't going to have much more affect on 2017 and beyond.
“Coach Levine made it very clear what the goal was with this team,” Evans said. “We’re not looking to be a 6-6 team, not looking to just squeak into a bowl game, we want to win our half of the Big Ten, we want to win the Big Ten and then go on to do bigger and better things.
“And I did my research and saw these new facilities were being put up and they were beautiful, so the off-the-field things were happening. I definitely saw that, and then I saw the coaching staff, their history and what they had done in the past and how they started off at Western Kentucky and had built it up into a very successful program. When they came here, I had no doubt that given the facilities and the genius of the coaches and their drive to want to win, I had no doubt it’d blow up and be a great situation here.”
But the transfers had to make an impact, too, and they did. Okonye started at cornerback, finishing the regular season with a team-high nine pass breakups; McCollum was fourth on the team in tackles, with 61, despite missing a month with injury; Shane Evans and Steinmetz made 12 starts each on the offensive line; Spencer Evans was excellent on kickoffs and made 7-of-10 field goals; the two J.C. receivers had ups and downs, but combined for 35 catches and a touchdown, with Zico’s score being a critical one in the win over Indiana.
Spencer Evans says the group was able to produce, in part, because it immediately felt welcomed by the incumbent Boilermakers, particularly the seniors. When Evans arrived just before training camp — he was the last of the group to do so — senior Danny Ezechukwu took him out to dinner, with the veteran linebacker wanting to make sure the kicker knew he was going to be treated fairly, even if there was a chance he’d compete for someone else’s job.
It had been the same for the others.
“We didn’t feel like outcasts as transfers or that we were the new guys,” Spencer Evans said. “I arrived on campus and immediately felt welcomed, which was really nice.
“But at the same time, I have this year and next year and I’m done with college football and that’s the same with a lot of those guys. For us personally, we want to get on the field and contribute and know that our time is now and we have to get in and make a difference immediately. We came in knowing we had to make a difference, had to make it happen now, we didn’t have a redshirt year to learn from experience.”
Of the 12 transfers, three will play their final college games on Dec. 27, when Purdue plays Arizona in the Foster Farms Bowl in Santa Clara, getting one more contest than many had predicted.
“I came in to just give us the best shot to win as many games as we possibly could,” said Okonye, one of the trio playing his last game. “I knew it would be tough, a tough situation, because I’d been in this situation (before). At Wake, it took us longer. But I was happy it was a much quicker turnaround here.”
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