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Purdue Basketball Gains New Walk-on Tommy Luce for 2016-17

Tommy Luce from Jeffersonville/Richmond will join the program as a walk-on this fall.

By BoilerTMill
Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports

Purdue's basketball roster for 2016-17 expanded by one today. No, it is not Kostas Antetokuonmpo. We're still waiting on him, and likely will be since he is supposedly in Greece playing this summer. Multiple sources, including @Boilerball itself (and pointed out here from reader Luke Mercer) that Tommy Luce is joining the walk-on bench mob of Jon McKeeman and Grady Eifert.

Luce is the son of successful Indiana high school coach Joe Luce. Luce has coached at Fountain Central, Benton Central, Marion, and Richmond before moving to Jeffersonville last season. He was quite successful at both Marion and Richmond. He took Marion to the state finals in 2008 where they lost to Gordon Heyward and Brownsburg. At Richmond he broke a long sectional and regional drought with a 22-3 record and sectional title in 2013-14 and 26-4 record with a regional title in 2014-15.

Luce was the 5'8" junior point guard on that 2014-15 Richmond team that reach the Final Four in Class 4A. According to MaxPreps he averaged 6.9 points and 1.3 assist in 30 games. He was mostly a complimentary player on a team that had Joel Okafor, who is now playing at Bradley. This past season he moved to Jeffersonville with his dad and the Red Devils were a rather mediocre 15-12. Of course, they did play in the same sectional with New Albany and all-everything Romeo Langford.

I can't seem to find stats from this past year, but the local paper in Jeffersonville did a Q&A with him in January.

Luce is likely going to be a practice player that gets in at the end of blowouts and that's it. Even Purdue's senior walk-on this past year, Stephen Toyra, didn't play that much. There might be a little bit more playing time than usual with only 10 scholarship players on the roster, but not a lot. As a coach's son he likely brings a lot of smarts to practice, where he can help the regular guys get better.

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