For someone who’d never played football before beginning his college career, James Evans is doing pretty well for himself.
The Auckland, New Zealand native, in just three years, evolved from the guy who was learning the basics of the game to a player earning national recognition. Evans enters his fourth year as Indiana’s starting punter as a veteran voice on the team, and the clear veteran leader among IU’s specialists.
The senior knows he’s come a long way to get to that point.
“I think my first year, everything was just so new to me,” Evans said. “And with having good guys around me, good coaches around me, and just experience in games and practice, I think I just grew mentally. I don’t think there’s a tremendous difference as far as my physical ability from year one to year four. But I think, mentally, as far as my preparation, my routine, and the kind of confidence that I bring to every game, it has definitely evolved positively.”
Evans was named to the Ray Guy Award preseason watch list, as one of the top punters in the nation. He’s one of 34 players on the list. He’s coming off a strong year, earning All-Big Ten third team honors from the media. Evans set an IU record by averaging 45.8 yards per punt, which ranked third in the Big Ten and 15th in the country.
He appreciated the watch list nod, but maintained perspective on its significance.
“It’s pretty cool. It’s a preseason watch list, though. So it doesn’t really mean anything,” Evans said. “It’d be nice to win it. But yeah. We’ll see. I mean, anytime you get any kind of recognition and you’re listed among the top guys in college football, it’s pretty cool. But now, I guess I’ve got to go out there and prove that I’m worthy of it.”
Evans called his football journey surreal, and said the biggest thing that’s helped him along the way has been setting goals and maintaining diligent work ethic to achieve them. Earlier in his career, as he continued to get acclimated to a new sport and new surroundings, his main goal was to simply stay afloat. As he’s developed and improved, and trained with other successful punters, Evans has set his sights on playing professionally in the NFL. He’s trained with other pros in the past — like 2023 Big Ten punter of the year and 2024 NFL draftee Tory Taylor from Iowa — and that’s shown him what it takes to get to that level.
The main goal for this year is working on improving at pinning opponents deep in their own territory. Evans said he had trouble gauging his own range last year after getting banged up early in the season, and that impacted his ability to pin opponents inside their five or 10-yard line. He feels that getting a better grasp of that can help him take the next step as a punter.
“I guess it would be (like) knowing your distances with your golf clubs, like my pitching wedge goes 130 yards, whatever. So knowing that, being pretty locked in on that, being able to pin teams deep inside the 5 or the 10. That’s probably the main thing,” Evans said. “And then in the open field, probably directionally, especially right. Like I have a tendency to drop the ball inside kicking right, so working on putting it, dropping it on my hip, just outside my hip and hitting a clean ball that turns over left to right.”
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