Copyright Staten Island Advance
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — In the high-stakes world of college basketball recruiting, sometimes the perfect match comes together with stunning speed. “The West Brighton Boilermaker,” an Advance/SILive.com documentary series chronicling Staten Island resident Liam Murphy’s journey to Purdue University captures one of those lightning-in-a-bottle moments — a recruitment that went from first contact to signed commitment in just seven days. “Everything happened in a week,” Charlie DeBiase Jr., senior Advance/SILive.com sports writer, said in the series. “It just came to fruition. They needed a shooter to complement their stars. They rolled out the red carpet for him. He liked what they had to say. He’s at Purdue.” This wasn’t just any program making a casual inquiry. This was Purdue University — a Big Ten powerhouse with legitimate national championship aspirations. And they weren’t just filling a roster spot; they were searching for the final piece to a championship puzzle. The courtship began with a video that caught a Purdue coach’s eye. “Lo and behold, Coach Sasha [Stefanovic] at Purdue comes across a video and sees this guy from North Florida draining three-pointers at the 42, 43% and the next thing you know, he gets a phone call,” DeBiase explained. For the Boilermakers, Murphy represented a very specific need. “They lose two stud shooters. Now they need someone to complement the studs that they have,” DeBiase said, painting a picture of a program that knew exactly what it was looking for in the transfer portal. What followed was a master class in modern college basketball recruiting — a virtual courtship that moved at breakneck speed. The day after Murphy’s initial conversation with an assistant coach, he found himself on a Zoom call with Purdue’s head coach Matt Painter and the entire coaching staff. But this wasn’t just any video call. It was a meticulously planned presentation designed to show Murphy exactly how he would fit into Purdue’s system. As Murphy’s support team watched in the background, the surreal nature of the moment began to sink in. “I’m in the background kind of faded out like we’re trying to keep the dog to make sure the dogs are quiet while we’re on the Zoom and all of a sudden I’m like, ‘that’s him,’” Eileen, Murphy’s mother said in the series, capturing the surreal nature of modern recruitment. On this call, the Purdue coaches weren’t making vague promises —they were showing Murphy game film with specific examples of how his skills would translate to their system. “They have on the Zoom call video of him playing for North Florida... we could envision you doing this for us, you know, you coming off the screen, pins, all this stuff like that,” DeBiase reveals. Stefanovic, Purdue’s director of player personnel, explained their approach on the podcast: “I think we’ve done a great job as a staff and as a program of through these Zooms and through these meetings of just showcasing how a player and our university can help each other, right? And I think we did a good job of showing Liam film of certain guys in our system that are like him having success.” The strategy worked perfectly. Before the Zoom call ended, Purdue had offered Murphy a spot on their roster. The next morning, Murphy made his decision. For Purdue, Murphy’s elite shooting ability made him the perfect complement to their returning stars. “We really like highly skilled people, highly intelligent people,” Stefanovic explained. “For us right now on our roster, we feel like we have two of the best in the country in Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Ren. The rest of our guys, we’re really trying to supplement skill around them. And I think Liam really fit that stereotype really well for what we were looking for.” Want to hear more about the fast-paced, seven-day recruitment that took Murphy from North Florida to a national championship contender?
