What does transfer Taylor Feldman bring to Purdue women's basketball? "A really dynamic point guard that can score"
The Northern Arizona transfer increased her scoring average by 10 points between her sophomore and junior seasons
A couple of housekeeping items:
• Purdue is out of the running for Virginia transfer Edessa Noyan, who committed to Indiana on Tuesday night. The forward was one of two players to visit last weekend, along with guard Lexus Bargesser (Indiana).
Guard Tanyuel Welch's (Memphis) visit was postponed to this weekend. WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: Welch committed to Arizona State.
Guard Kiki Smith (Arkansas) was in West Lafayette on Monday and Tuesday. Smith was named 2024 NJCAA DI Player of the Year and First Team All-American at Hutchinson Community College before transferring to Arkansas. She shot 40.6% from 3-point range last season.
• The Boilermakers have two additions from the portal (Madison Layden-Zay and Taylor Feldman) to bring their roster to seven players.
Feldman played three seasons at Northern Arizona before entering the transfer portal. The 5-foot-8 Feldman was a unanimous first-team All-Big Sky selection after averaging 16.4 points, 3.9 assists and 3.0 rebounds. She’s from California, where she attended Crean Lutheran in Tustin. She signed with Purdue on April 7. (According to purduesports.com, Feldman will wear No. 5).
Had the opportunity to interview Loree Payne, who recruited Feldman to Northern Arizona but left after last season and is now the head coach at Santa Clara.
Payne called Feldman “a perfectionist and is a high achiever at everything she does. She'll do well there. She's a fun kid. She's very engaging. She'll probably be a crowd favorite just the way she plays. She always has a smile on her face.”
More from Payne in this Q&A:
Q: What type of player is Purdue getting?
Payne: A great player. She developed pretty significantly through our program. When she came in as a freshman, she was sitting behind our all-conference point guard (Reagan Schenck) and just learned a lot and was able to, over the past two years, really put herself in a good position. She took the reins as our starting point guard this past year and even her sophomore year when she started about half the games. She went from being a really good player to an incredibly great one. That was all of the hard work that she put in. I think she developed into one of the best point guards in the league, a unanimous first-team all-conference player. I think Purdue is getting a really dynamic point guard that can score and a really strong competitor.
Q: Do you see her as a true point guard?
Payne: Yes. She played a bit off-ball her freshman year, but for Tay, she wants the ball in her hands. I think she does a great job of getting the offense organized and pushing transition. I think she's dynamic in transition and puts herself in positions where she can score. The pace that she plays fit really well into our system. I'm not sure what kind of system Purdue plays, but we were an up-tempo, run, play, and score 80 points plus a game. Her style definitely fit right into what we were trying to do.
Q: You mentioned she played behind somebody else, but when you mapped out her career during the recruiting process, was that part of the plan to bring her along?
Payne: “A little bit. We had a first-team all-conference point guard her freshman year. When we recruited Tay, I don't think she had gotten the exposure she probably should have. She went to a small school in Southern California and didn't play for a big brand-name AAU team. We were only a handful of Division I teams that recruited her. When I saw the kid, ‘I'm like, Man, this kid is going to be really good,’ and we got her here without much competition, and it worked out well for us.
One of the big pieces in our program is player development. I think we hit the lottery by getting her, and for her to play behind a phenomenal point guard, one of the best that the Big Sky has ever seen was a huge development piece. She learned a lot. She just really worked on her game and put herself in a position where she was able to take those reins and continue to get better and better.
Q: How did the jump from six points a game as a sophomore to 16 points as a junior happen?
Payne: Pretty big. She was splitting point guard duties two years ago with a transfer player that we had. She got a lot more minutes this year. She was the No. 1 point guard. She was the main one, and she handled that position really well. We had to get her a little bit of rest during the game because she played so hard. We were able to increase her minutes, which I think increased her production.
Q: She had 191 free throw attempts, the fifth-most in the country. How did she get the line so much?
Note: Feldman shot 85.3% from the line last season. No player on last year’s Purdue team shot more than 93 free throws.
Payne: She's super aggressive to the hoop, especially coming downhill as a point guard and pushing in transition. She understands how to get to the rim and draw fouls. Being an undersized point guard, I think she has figured out how to put herself in a position where she can draw those fouls. She's a really good free-throw shooter, and that puts her in a higher production range. That added to her points per game, for sure, but she's crafty with the ball. She's figured out how to use her size as an advantage.
Q: How did the recruiting process play out while she was in high school?
Payne: I think someone had reached out about her and said, ‘Hey, this kid from Southern California is putting up big points.’ I think she scored 56 or 54 in a high school game. We had some connections down there, and we were able to see her play in AAU. We watched her through that summer, and we ended up not signing her until the spring because we weren't sure how our roster was going to play out.
I watched her in high school throughout the year and got a chance to really see what her potential could be and what her ceiling could be. I think she was talking to a couple of other schools at that point. It was a great process of getting to know her, and I think there was a mutual recruitment. Like I said, we definitely hit the lottery in pursuing her and getting her to sign to play for us.
Q: What did she like about joining your program?
Payne: I think she was incredibly grateful for the opportunity. She's a kid who is very grateful and she always had a dream of playing Division I. When she came in to learn from Reagan, she had a mentor her freshman year. To learn from and grow, I think that was a big piece for her. I think she was excited about where our program was, the success that we had had, and how she would be able to contribute to that. I think she saw the potential of her contributions and definitely proved it when she got here.