Purdue’s Zach Edey is making the most of his turn: ‘He’s a moose’

PORTLAND, Ore. — As Purdue’s photo op broke apart and players jogged off the floor to end a celebration, Zach Edey lingered on the PK85 logo at midcourt. He grinned a little. Like he’d planned for the possibility no one thought possible. Then the 7-foot-4 junior took a big step forward to get the full attention of a man in a black suit still standing there. And, from way on high, Edey pointed to his feet.

Or, more specifically, his pair of Nike Zoom Rise 2s. Size 20 schooners. Old reliables, looking beat to all hell. Edey doesn’t care much for fancy footwear. He just knows what he likes, and humans of his proportions tend to get attached to things that are actually comfortable to wear. Which brought Edey to his point, as the man in the suit’s eyes again met his own.

“I heard they stopped making these,” Edey told Phil Knight, the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike. “I need to get more.”

A little before 3 p.m. Pacific Time on Nov. 27, 2022, if you’re marking the moment the biggest man in college basketball went bigger than anyone can imagine.

“He was right there,” Edey explained not long after he and No. 24 Purdue issued a 75-56 stomping to No. 8 Duke for the PK Legacy title, as he walked back to the locker room down to only black socks on his lower extremities. “I’m gonna ask him, hey, if you guys have any stockpile of size 20 in my shoes, send them my way. I would really appreciate them.”

And why not? At this point, it appears the Boilermakers’ go-to guy can get whatever he wants, after he used this event to clamp his waffle-iron hands on the Year of the Big in men’s college hoops. It was a talking point going into the season that did not necessarily always include the supersized Canadian doing work in West Lafayette, which was somewhat understandable, if only because he’d spent two years in a timeshare at his own position. But it is a discussion that starts with him now. He has outperformed, or gone straight through, everyone else in front of him in line. It’s Zach Edey’s turn.

A 21-point, 12-rebound, foul-everyDuke-big-out game on Sunday. A 23point, seven-board, three-block game to stifle Gonzaga and Drew Timme two nights previous. More broadly, adding about 10 minutes per night to his 2021–22 workload and ensuring there’s little effect to his production: from 30.3 points and

16.2 rebounds per 40 minutes as a sophomore to 29.7 points and 16.3 rebounds per 40 as a junior, going into the PK Legacy final. The weight of expectation heaped upon an already ponderous 285-pound frame, slowing him down not at all.

Pick a side in this, and you’re bound to find a stat or metric to support your cause. We’ll go with this one: There is indeed a big man atop the KenPom.com player of the year ratings as of Sunday night. It is not Timme. It is not Oscar Tshiebwe. It is not Armando Bacot, Hunter Dickinson or any of the other skyscrapers scattered across rosters nationwide.

Edey stands above them all.

“I noticed for sure,” he told The Athletic on Sunday, when asked if he felt left out of the big-man hype before the season. “I don’t really care, though. End of the day, what the media says about you doesn’t mean anything on the court. You go on the court, you have to prove it every single time. What they say about me now still doesn’t matter. I still have to go on the court to play hard, to hustle. The media talking about you isn’t going to get you points. Scoring the ball gets you points. Playing hard gets you rebounds. It doesn’t really matter how people perceive you. You just have to go and put the work in.”

Being 7-4 has its benefits — “He’s a hard guy to prepare for,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said, “because there’s nobody else like him” — but anyone shrugging off Edey’s success as simply a function of his frame is being hilariously reductive. The presence of Trevion Williams for the past two years necessitated the split workload at center. But Purdue coach Matt Painter always insisted Edey was athletic and conditioned enough, even at his size, to put in 30 minutes a night. And he’s averaging 29.8 this season, showing no signs of wear and tear. Edey also has the highest usage rate of any rotation regular while he’s on the floor, and his turnover percentage (11.8 percent) was at a career-low going into the Duke game. It only got better during it: In 32 minutes on Sunday, with Purdue playing through its big man out of both the high and low posts, Edey had zero turnovers against three assists. He’s also committed two or fewer fouls in four of Purdue’s six games; on Sunday, he got whistled just once while drawing eight fouls on the Blue Devils. Edey knows what he means to this group and doesn’t clumsily put Purdue at a disadvantage each night.

In short: big player. Big basketball brain, too, maximizing playing time that’s not doled out in four-minute increments. “I’m allowed to get into more of my rhythm, play through some of my mistakes,” Edey said. “It helps me get in the flow of the game really well.”

Edey is not going to step out beyond