Arace: Zach Edey, Purdue reach Final Four and weight of history lightens
In March of 2018, Virginia became the first No. 1 seed to fall to a No. 16 seed, University of Maryland-Baltimore County – the UMBC Retrievers. And it wasn’t even close (74-54).
The next year, Virginia went on to win the national title.
In March of 2023, right here in Columbus, Purdue became the second No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16, Farleigh Dickinson – the FDU Knights. It was close (63-58).
Will Purdue win the national title this year?
The Boilermakers have earned a reputation as the standard bearer of a substandard Big Ten basketball conference, and as lacking in intestinal fortitude. In the previous three years, they lost to No. 16 FDU in the first round, to No. 15 St. Peter’s in the Sweet 16 and to No. 13 North Texas in the first round. Timber!
This year, the Boilermakers won the Big Ten regular-season title, their fifth since 2010, but they lost to Ohio State. And got bounced out of the Big Ten tournament in the semifinal round by a No. 5 seed (Wisconsin).
Q: When do you really know it's March? A: When Purdue loses.
As Wilt Chamberlain said, nobody loves Goliath. Zach Edey, Purdue’s 7-foot-4, 300-pound center, is three inches taller and 25 pounds heavier than Wilt (RIP) was. Nobody seems to love Edey, except maybe Canada. This season, Edey is averaging 24.6 points, 12 rebounds and 2.2 blocks. Next weekend, when the Naismith Award votes are tallied, odds are he will become the first two-time Player of the Year since Virginia’s Ralph Sampson, a 7-4 center who won the award three years in a row in the early 1980s.
For all of this, Edey is viewed as a bigger version of Tyler Hansbrough, but with a worse haircut.
Edey on Sunday dropped 40 points on Tennessee to propel Purdue to its first Final Four since 1980. And it wasn't that close (72-66). Thus, Edey did something that Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, the most talented basketball player in Purdue history and the school’s last national Player of the Year (1994), never did. Edey got the Boilermakers to the Final Four of the Big Dance. It's more historic than you might think.
To say “Purdue basketball” is to conjure a degree of success. It’s a major, land-grant university in Indiana, right? They hoop in West Lafayette. Gene Keady made it to the tournament almost every year, right? Boiler Up. In the grander scheme of things, though, Purdue basketball is not a springtime institution. The first and only time the Boilermakers won a national title, it predated the NCAA Tournament and was known as “mythical.” The year was 1932 and their star player was John Wooden. Yes, that John Wooden.
Wooden, as coach of UCLA, swept aside Purdue the first time the Boilermakers reached the Final Four, in 1969 when a UCLA team led by Kareem Abdul-Jabar beat a Purdue team led by Rick Mount in a national semifinal. In 1980, UCLA, coached by another Hall of Famer, Larry Brown, beat a Purdue team led by Joe Barry Carroll in a national semifinal. Those two Final Four appearances and the mythical national title of 1932 are the three high-water marks for a program that has been around since 1896. In Indiana. Even Ohio State has had higher highs, and more of them, in basketball.
One can only imagine how the 600,000 Purdue alumni, spread across the globe, have looked upon coach Matt Painter and Edey. Heretofore, Painter and Edey have been easy to criticize, Painter for not coming up with better schemes of support for his big man in the big games, and Edey for being Goliath and losing to little men with slings every March. The weight of history hangs over them. It's heavy, man.
Sometime soon, an argument will be rejoined. The subject will be whether Edey merits a lottery pick, and whether he’ll have the NBA career arc of, say, Frank Kaminsky. But let’s just set that aside for another week and give credit where it is due. Edey is averaging 30 points and 16.25 rebounds through four NCAA Tournament games. His performance against Tennessee Sunday was a tour de force. Dude is in freak mode.
Will Purdue win the national title this year?
It’s a fair question, finally.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Arace: Purdue advances to first NCAA Tournament Final Four since 1980
