Doyel: With Tyler Trent's legacy, Purdue welcomes Texas' leukemia survivor Andrew Jones with open arms

Gregg Doyel | IndyStar

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WEST LAFAYETTE – Andrew Jones would have liked Tyler Trent. And Tyler Trent would have loved this kid, even if Jones does play for Texas, even if he did hit the free throws Saturday night that clinched the Longhorns’ 70-66 victory against No. 22 Purdue.

See, here’s the thing with Tyler: He knew there was more to life than sports. Just one of many things he would’ve had in common with Jones, a 6-4 sophomore guard at Texas, a former McDonald’s All American who was diagnosed with leukemia in January 2018.

You know Tyler’s story, and you know how it turned out. He was the kid from Carmel, indomitable, the kid that cancer came after once, twice, three times. Cancer took four shots at Tyler, taking part of his arm, then his pelvis, then a chunk of his lower back. The cancer followed him to Purdue, then followed him back home to Carmel. Finally the cancer got what it wanted from Tyler, but not before Tyler captured the attention of an entire country with his courage, his fight, his will to live.

Oh, Andrew Jones would have liked Tyler Trent.

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“So sad what happened,” Jones is telling me outside the Texas locker room after the game. “Guys like me and Tyler, we just want to help people.”

No doubt about it. Tyler would have loved this kid.

Paint Crew sign makes Andrew smile

The sign was amazing. The sign was beautiful.

The sign was hanging below the Purdue student section called The Paint Crew, next to the “Play Hard” counter where Tyler Trent once flipped the numbers. He was a sports nut, Tyler. Slept in a tent outside Ross-Ade Stadium during chemo treatments, literally driving back from the hospital in Indianapolis to sleep in the tent because he wanted good tickets for the 2017 Michigan game. Took a selfie with a man who walked past. A man named Jeff Brohm, who later made Tyler his team’s captain.

So anyway, the sign on Saturday night.

It was a black sheet of some sort, with these words written in the following two lines:

Andrew Jones

Is Unstoppable

Between those lines was a merger of the Texas and Purdue logos — one-half of a steer’s longhorn, and one half of the iconic Purdue train. The logos were connected by a single orange ribbon, the symbol for leukemia awareness.

I watched Andrew Jones discover the sign. It was about an hour before the game, and he’s on the court warming up. He’s shooting at the other basket, so he doesn’t see it at first. After 15 minutes of shooting, he’s standing near midcourt, talking to a Texas coach, facing away from the sign. Jones starts looking around, just taking in Mackey, when he sees something over his shoulder. He continues to look around, but then it registers. He does a double-take, his eyes going back to the sign, and he stares at it for almost a full minute.

Then he starts smiling.

“Amazing,” Jones told me after the game, after hitting four free throws in the final 10 seconds to seal this win for Texas. “That’s the first sign anyone’s ever done for me since I came back.”

Texas coach Shaka Smart is talking with me about the sign, and he’s a guy who can talk fast when the mood strikes, but he’s going slow now. He’s getting emotional. He doesn’t crack, but he’s close. So close.

“I saw it,” Shaka says. “That’s a class act. This is a class place. Literally, it’s saying ‘Andrew Jones is unstoppable’ even though he plays for Texas. It just goes to show …”

Shaka pauses. He’s not going to crack, but it’s close. He finishes his thought:

“This is so much bigger than basketball.”

Tyler would have liked Shaka Smart, too.

One more thing about that sign: You need to know who did it. You want a great story? Here’s your great story. Her name is Hannah Rollins, and she went to Roncalli, where her best friend was Kathleen Soller — a cross-country runner who was diagnosed with cancer as a senior but ran one more race, in the middle of chemotherapy treatments. Soller, who beat cancer and now plays lacrosse for Saint Mary’s, wanted to honor a girl who was fighting cancer at the same she was in 2017, a girl who didn’t make it. Kathleen Soller ran one final race for Audrey Lupton.

Hannah Rollins and Kathleen Soller have been best friends since kindergarten, and being at Purdue now, Hannah of course knew all about Tyler Trent. Then this happened: Hannah’s dad was diagnosed this year with appendix cancer. So when Texas came to town, and brought with it leukemia survivor Andrew Jones, she wanted to do something to show support. She gathered three friends — Shelby Novitski, Ana Maksimovich and Amanda Schafer — and they made the sign that made Andrew Jones smile.

“Some things are bigger than basketball,” Hannah was telling me before tipoff. “And I bet even the players on our team would agree: It’s important to show our support.”

Andrew, Tyler two peas in a pod

Andrew and Tyler Trent were different people with different gifts — Andrew was an NBA prospect before his leukemia and may just be one anyway, a 6-4 guard with great range and length on the defensive end; Tyler was a brilliant student and leader — but they had so much in common.

Andrew was practicing this summer and again this preseason through chemotherapy treatments, literally wearing the chemo machine in a fanny pack around his waist, the tubes running under his shirt and out his sleeve into the port in his arm. That port — called a picc line, short for peripherally inserted central catheter — stayed in Andrew’s arm for more than a year. He hid it on the court under a sleeve, and hid it around campus under layers of clothes.

Tyler was a different kind of tough. Same, but different. He was a sports writer for the Purdue school paper who covered the Boilermakers basketball team during his third battle with cancer, using a crutch to get around Madison Square Garden at the 2018 Big Ten tournament. He’d just had his pelvis replaced, and the cancer had reappeared in his lower back, and the pain was just terrible. But he didn’t tell people that. He grabbed his crutch and went to work.

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Andrew credits his faith in God for his positive attitude, and often says these words: “Only the strong survive.”

Tyler credited his faith in God for his positive attitude, and often tweeted this hashtag: #OnlyTheStrong.

Two peas in a pod, these guys. Tyler was all about service, wanting to use his fight with cancer to raise awareness and funds, even allowing researchers at Riley to dig into his tumor — a painful biopsy; you have no idea — so they could study it in hopes of finding a cure someday. Tyler knew the cure wouldn’t be in time for him, but he endured the pain anyway.

“I want to make sure nobody else goes through this,” he’d tell me from time to time.

Andrew Jones? He’s all about service. Kids around the country reach out to him, athletes and otherwise, when they are diagnosed with leukemia. Andrew responds to all of them, calls them “friends I’ve never met,” and wants to do more. Listen to this kid. Tell me you don’t hear Tyler Trent:

“I’ve received so much help and I just want to make everybody proud,” Andrew says. “Someday I want to start a foundation and really help people. I know the Jimmy V Foundation does a great job raising money, and I know there are others that do it too. Someday I want to be able to help.”

Now I’m smiling at Andrew. I tell him Tyler started a foundation with the goal of raising $1 million to study pediatric cancer. I tell him the Tyler Trent Foundation recently passed $2 million.

Andrew is quiet for a minute. He’s just staring at me.

“Really,” he says, finally. He’s not asking a question. He’s trying to digest what he just heard.

“Tyler raised $2 million?” Andrew asks.

I’m nodding. Can’t speak at the moment. It happens.

“That was an impressive kid,” he says.

Yes he was, I tell Andrew Jones. You’d have loved Tyler Trent. And he’d have loved you.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.