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Butterfly Effect: Octeus Saves Day

On3 imageby: Brian Neubert08/12/25brianneubert
Purdue's Jon Octeus
Purdue's Jon Octeus (Jamie Rhodes/USA Today Sports)

“The Butterfly Effect” is a limited-run series GoldandBlack.com is rolling out this summer highlighting events that occurred or decisions that were made that rippled out and helped Purdue reach its current level, highlighted by the last season’s Final Four and leading into this much-anticipated coming season.

An example of the Butterfly Effect in this context: Roy Williams leaving Kansas for North Carolina, thus pulling Bill Self from Illinois to Kansas, leading to Bruce Weber getting the Illinois job, and Matt Painter being promoted at Southern Illinois, all just as Purdue’s post-Gene Keady plans had to be made.

PART 5: JON OCTEUS SWOOPS IN AT THE LAST SECOND

Purdue had just endured back-to-back losing seasons, facing a pivotal 2014-15 season, which Matt Painter has suggested might have gotten him fired had it gone wrong.

It was going to be a freshman-heavy team, never an easy thing with such stakes. A.J. Hammons and Rapheal Davis were a decent core for Vince Edwards, Isaac Haas, Dakota Mathias, etc., to work in around, but there was a glaring void. Two-year starting point guard Ronnie Johnson had transferred in the spring and like Johnson, returnee Bryson Scott had looked like he likely wasn’t going to be part of the solution. Painter, scarred by the lack of skill and IQ that marred the prior two seasons, took P.J. Thompson as a spring signee a few weeks before Johnson transferred, but certainly not with the intent of starting him from Day 1.

You think the transfer market these days is wild? You may never see something like the Jon Octeus story again.

It was Oct. 8 of 2014 — preseason practice was just weeks away — that Octeus, formerly of Colorado State, was denied admission to UCLA’s graduate school and landed at Purdue for his fifth season, at the height of grad-transfer mania in college basketball.

To repeat: It was October.

Octeus not only joined Purdue at the last second, but he started from Day 1, was legitimately good and really saved the day for the Boilermakers, who won 21 games that season and returned to the NCAA Tournament. It was a brief stay, but when Purdue needed a winning season, Octeus filled its biggest gap.

What would have happened had Painter endured a third consecutive losing season? Had Octeus not fallen out of the sky, that hard question might have needed an answer.

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