Brandon Newman Enters the Transfer Portal

We are now deep into the offseason for Purdue basketball and that means change is always possible. While Purdue says goodbye to Matt Frost and David Jenkins Jr. we await word from Zach Edey on his return there is always the transfer portal looming over everything. Well today, news broke of Purdue’s first player heading to the portal.

By this point we’ve gotten used to seeing this type of tweet in the offseason. Thanking your school for what they’ve done for you and indicating that you will be looking elsewhere. This one is a bit different though as Newman doesn’t explicitly say he’s transferring. So there was some pause in drafting this. That is until about five minutes later when I saw confirmation from Jamie Shaw of On3.

Newman was never able to truly find his place after his standout freshman year where he started 23 games and was a key contributor. Coming into his sophomore season Newman was expected to be a starter and one of the players most likely to step up. Unfortunately, he struggled to shoot the ball and was eventually moved into a reserve role. During his sophomore season he found his footing only during the Big Ten Tournament with a return to form from his freshman year.

The hope was this resurgance would lead to a strong junior year but unfortunately that was again not the case. Despite constantly putting in work and being spoken of very highly by his teammates and coaches things never really seemed to gel for Newman at Purdue. During this, his junior year, Newman again found a different gear late in the year and helped Purdue get back on track to win the conference regular season title by three games as well as the Big Ten Tournament. We all know how this season ended.

Due to the redshirt Brandon Newman was able to get his degree in December so he will be walking away from Purdue with a degree and that is something that he will always be able to use once his time playing basketball is over. Kudos to the young man for completing his degree. We wish him nothing but success wherever he lands.