'Beyond tough:' Purdue grad transfer Evan Boudreaux driven to prove he belongs in Big Ten

From youth ball to AAU to Dartmouth, forward built a reputation for toughness and work ethic. Now he's committed to bringing the same attributes to Purdue.

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WEST LAFAYETTE — The opposing fifth-grade basketball player tried to contain Evan Boudreaux the only way he could — with one sneaky punch in the kidneys after another.

Terry Boudreaux remembers his son looking to the referees for help on that Sunday morning a decade ago, only to be told to play on. The mild-mannered Evan Boudreaux eventually stopped and held his index finger in front of the opponent's face and issued a warning: The next cheap shot would be the last.

Soon after, when Boudreaux headed back up court after scoring, the opponent gave him one last jab in the ribs. Evan wound up and swung a punch that — thankfully, perhaps mercifully — didn't connect.

The refs finally intervened to calm the situation. Evan Boudreaux had made his point.

"From the time that kid was born he has always been a tough little SOB," Terry Boudreaux said. "Like, really tough — beyond tough. He wouldn't take any crap from anybody."

So perhaps it makes sense that on March 29, Evan Boudreaux announced he would continue his basketball career in an arena with the words "Time To Play Hard" painted above the tunnel to the court. 

EVAN BOUDREAUX: Purdue graduate transfer wants NCAA Tournament experience

Boudreaux never again took a shot in the kidneys from that opponent. Other jabs kept coming. Some said he lacked the athleticism to play major conference basketball. Others saw his swanky zip code and comfortable upbringing and dismissed him as soft.

In his high school career in Lake Forest, Illinois, and two seasons starring at Dartmouth, Boudreaux dismissed those assumptions with his relentless play and production. The 6-8, 220-pound forward will arrive at Purdue next month with an Ivy League degree in hand, but more thresholds to cross.

"The chip he has on his shoulder has always made him want to prove he belongs and he can perform at all these levels," said Dickie Simpkins, a former NBA player, current Charlotte Hornets scout and Boudreaux's longtime mentor.

"I believe that chip motivates him also go to Purdue and prove he can play on this stage. He wants to win."

No excuse

Lake Forest coach Phil LaScala remembers little difference between Evan Boudreaux in practice and Evan Boudreaux on game night.

"We keep track of a lot of things in practice as far as point values and stuff like that," LaScala said. "He wanted to win every drill."

Located in the North Shore of Chicago's suburbs, Lake Forest epitomizes affluence. Multiple Fortune 500 companies headquarter there. A Bloomberg analysis last year ranked Lake Forest 31st on a list of America's 100 richest communities, with an average household income above $250,000.

Evan Boudreaux gleaned his work ethic there from parents determined to pass along their own blue collar upbringing.

Gail Koziara Boudreaux's father made Craftsman wrenches at Moore Drop Forge in Springfield, Massachusetts. Terry Boudreaux's father worked in insurance to support five children. Their mothers were homemakers.

Gail and Terry first met as athletes from neighboring high schools. When they married years later — after Gail's own stellar basketball career at Dartmouth and a professional stint in Europe — Terry said the down payment on their first home left them with $180 in their bank account.

Back then, luxury meant tossing a can of tuna into the macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Gail Boudreaux currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer for Anthem, Inc., the Indianapolis-based insurance giant. Her career allowed Terry, also a former CEO, to retire and stay home with Evan and their oldest son, Chris.


Evan wasn't around yet during the lean years, but he absorbed his parents' example. Hard work was expected. Shortcuts, even in basketball, were forbidden.

"Growing up, there was no excuse to not be playing hard," Evan Boudreaux said. "There were a lot of instances where maybe I would take a play off or something and my parents would let me hear it. If I wasn't making shots, there wasn't an excuse not to play defense and no excuse not to get a rebound, because those are things I can control."

Boudreaux, however, knew many opponents assumed the opposite. He and his teammates were the rich, white kids from the suburbs. Life was easy. Privilege, per the stereotype, fostered mental weakness.

All of which sounded familiar to his mother, who led working-class Chicopee Comprehensive to two Massachusetts girls basketball state championships in the mid-1970s.

"I was on the other side of it, so I remember that," Gail Boudreaux said. "I know the attitude. I know the feeling. (Lake Forest) took real pride in saying 'We're not going to be the team that doesn’t fight hard and play hard and dive after every ball.' "

Boudreaux played varsity football as a Lake Forest freshman, starting at punter and coming along as a quarterback. He moved right into varsity basketball as well. Yet at age 14, Boudreaux was disappointed. He felt rusty — not as sharp as he should have been to start the season. 

The football career ended so Boudreaux could focus on training for basketball in the preseason.

Around the same age, major college coaches began to notice the big kid. Playing in Simpkins' AAU program, Next Level Peformance, Boudreaux played alongside a loaded roster of eventual Division I basketball stars — Villanova's Jalen Brunson, West Virginia's Jevon Carter, Tennesse's Admiral Schofield — as well as Indiana receiver Simmie Cobbs.

As his skills progressed, the toughness never waned. In the semifinals of a national AAU tournament one summer, Boudreaux's nose absorbed the worst of a collision with Cobbs. From the stands, Terry Boudreaux watched the blood pour from his son's nose, now broken and pointing at a hard left angle. As he watched the athletic trainer plug up Evan's nostrils, he assumed his son's day was over.

Evan Boudreaux calmly walked over to Simpkins and requested to return to the game. Simpkins flinched, questioned the decision, then relented. NLP won that semifinal, after which Boudreaux's parents begged him to go to the hospital.

Boudreaux instead took some Advil, used his backpack for a pillow for a couple of hours, then returned to play in the championship game.

"Watching him all these years, that was just something in his DNA he had," Simpkins said. "That level of of being able to grind it out and not be scared to play against anybody — play physical and play in the moment."

Chasing the dream

While Boudreaux held scholarship offers from schools in every major conference, his recruitment eventually stalled. He didn't reach the height some projected when watching him play in junior high. He also ran into some bad luck. Coaching staffs at Northwestern and Boston College who were high on Boudreaux ended up getting fired along the way.

The family ties back to Hanover, New Hampshire, were strong. Boudreaux knew Dartmouth and the community. He had no chance to surpass his mother's athletic career there. Gail Boudreaux won four Ivy League shot put championships to go along with three conference Player of the Year awards in basketball, where she remains the Big Green's leading scorer and rebounder.


Even without that legacy, Evan Boudreaux recognized the value of a Dartmouth degree. This was an Illinois State Scholar who maxed out the number of Mandarin Chinese classes offered at Lake Forest.

To announce his decision to his family, Boudreaux came downstairs one morning decked out in Dartmouth apparel.

"i asked him why Dartmouth and not Iowa or Yale," Terry Boudreaux said, referring to his son's other finalists. "He said, 'Honestly, I'm thinking about the next 40 years of my life, not the next four."

Dartmouth has — technically — played in more NCAA Championship games than Purdue.

Prior to 1950 the tournament invited only eight teams. The Big Green lost the 1942 national title game to Stanford, then two years later, took Utah to overtime in a 42-40 loss.

Dartmouth made its last NCAA Tournament appearance in 1959 with a first-round loss to West Virginia. Boudreaux wanted to change that.

"It would be incredible to be the class to take them back," Boudreaux said. "That's how I approached it — to be the class that finally does it and pushes them over the hump and how special that would be for everybody."

Individually, Boudreaux thrived. He earned Ivy league Rookie of the Year honors as a freshman, averaging 17.7 points and 9.4 rebounds. He repeated as team MVP as a sophomore by averaging 17.5 points and 9.5 rebounds. 

As a team, however, Dartmouth went 17-38 in those two seasons. It finished sixth in the conference his freshman season, then in a three-way tie for the bottom three spots his sophomore season. That performance wasn't even enough to qualify for the new four-team Ivy League Tournament. 

In addition to being the school's greatest female athlete, Gail Boudreaux sits on the Board of Trustees. The family endowed the women's basketball head coaching position with a $2 million gift in 2015. Chris Boudreaux played one year of football for the Big Green.

Evan Boudreaux took some criticism when his decision to leave came out on the eve of this past season. He said the decision was actually made and communicated to coaches in the preseason.

"You only get to go around once," Gail Boudreaux said. "From his perspective, I completely supported it."

The rubber match

When Purdue coach Matt Painter scouted and recruited Boudreaux in high school, he saw the personality he covets throughout his program.

"We always loved how hard he played and how tough he was and his ability to rebound," Painter said. "That competitive fire you want from your players. He's somebody that's very competitive and lays it on the line.

Boudreaux took four unofficial visits to Purdue in high school. Terry Boudreaux remembers driving away each time confused as to why Painter didn't offer a scholarship. (It didn't help that the Boilermakers needed to keep a scholarship — and a position — open for eventual Big Ten Player of the Year Caleb "Biggie" Swanigan in the same class.)


Yet Painter and assistant Greg Gary made an impact that, in the long run, paid off.

"Even though they though didn't offer him, they always told him the truth," Terry Boudreaux said. "When a kid is as smart as Evan is ... he sees through all the BS. At the end they said, 'This is why we didn't offer you; We're looking for a different kind if player.' Evan was cool with that. 'Tell me the truth.' "

Two grad transfer destinations jumped to the forefront: Purdue and Xavier. ("A toss-up," Terry Boudreaux called it.) When Evan Boudreaux committed to the Musketeers in December, coach Chris Mack was in the process of leading them to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Then Mack left for Louisville in March, and suddenly Boudreaux faced another decision. Hold firm on his commitment to Xavier, follow Mack to Louisville, look into the new offers coming in, or reconsider the school he almost picked over the winter.

Purdue quickly reached out to Simpkins when Boudreaux decommitted from Xavier. By the end of the week, he was a Boilermaker.

"We told him we were even, and we just wanted to win the rubber match," Painter said.

They happened to need exactly what Boudreaux brings — rebounding and offensive versatility at power forward, and a mature, veteran presence on a young-yet-talented team.

Simpkins, who has followed Boudreaux's career since sixth grade, believes he'll transition from Ivy League standout to impact Big Ten player. Forget that his academically renowned former conference produces better talent than many fans realize, or that his style of play melds perfectly with the identity Painter cultivates.

Simpkins believes Boudreaux will succeed simply because of the person he is.

"He's a kid that has mental toughness, physical toughness and is about his business," Simpkins said. "Most kids that I've seen who have been able to grow up in Evan's environment do not have that toughness. He's very rare."

That fifth-grade opponent, wherever he is now, can attest. 

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