Zach Edey's impact for Purdue has been profound

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It wasn't all that long ago that it seemed like a best-case scenario for Zach Edey for his freshman season at Purdue might simply be for him to merely give the Boilermakers decent minutes off the bench.

Even that might have seemed like a big ask, though, for a rookie who came to college with only a few years of actual basketball experience and very little as a heavily relied-upon player, either at the grassroots or high school levels.

Wednesday night, Edey will play in his first Big Ten game, when Ohio State visits Mackey Arena.

He'll do so as a starter, on a team that also has a preseason All-Big Ten player at his position.

And, he'll do so as heavily a relied-upon a player, when he's in the game, as Purdue has.

That's how far the 7-foot-4 Canadian's meteoric rise has brought him in a very short period of time.

Not only is Edey giving Purdue those decent minutes — answering in no uncertain terms the backup-center concerns created by Matt Haarms' springtime transfer — but leading his team in scoring.

Playing just 15.5 minutes per game, Edey is tied with Trevion Williams for the team lead at 13.3 points. That equates to an extraordinary 34.4 points per 40 minutes, a very Isaac Haas-ish sort of level of offensive efficiency and then some. Edey is shooting a mere 75 percent from the floor, shooting 74 percent at the foul line and piling up fouls on opponents same as Haas did years earlier.

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Purdue will tell you that the form Edey has shown in games has been what it had seen in practice prior to the season. Nevertheless, it has to be considered stunning that Edey — again, with so little basketball experience — has done what he's done so soon.

"That's a good question," Edey said, when asked if he'd surprised himself. "A little bit, sometimes.

"I wasn't expecting going into the season to get all the touches I'm getting, to do all this, but it's been working great."

There's been no easing Edey into college basketball, that's for sure.

It doesn't exactly take a seasoned basketball evaluator's eye to recognize the mismatch Edey presents, and Purdue's weaponized it from his very first moment on the floor.

The freshman's usage rate, according to KenPom, is a team-high 35.6 percent. If Edey worked enough possessions — 40 percent is the bar — to factor into national rankings, he'd be top five nationally in that category. (Williams is 15th at 33.8 percent of Purdue's possessions).

Such a prominent role has come with significant responsibility. Some might even say pressure. This is essentially Edey's classroom, too, because he's still learning the game, and he's doing so at a very level, in a position where he's going to see anything and everything overwhelmed defenders can throw at him. Double-teams, triple-teams, man-to-man, zone, whatever it may be. And heavy contact, obviously.

"I've learned something from every game I've played in," Edey said. "I've had to learn to keep the ball high, to not dribble as much until I know there's no double-team or triple-team coming."

He's seemed careful not to curb his physicality.

"He's relentless," Williams said. "A lot of those bigs, you hit them one time and they stop going. Zach's so big, I hit him once and he's still right there trying to get the rebound."

As easy as Edey has made things look at times catching passes and scoring off people a half-foot shorter than him, it hasn't been. The natural inconsistencies of youth showed up against Valparaiso, when he backed up a poor first half with a strong second. Turnovers have been an issue — moving screens and the difficult calls that come with his size, among them — as they've been for Purdue's whole team.

The fouling issue is a fight Matt Painter is well schooled in, having coached Haas, something of a unicorn for Big Ten officials when he first showed up at Purdue.

Make no mistake: Edey has gotten a lot of calls in his favor and he's earned a lot of the fouls he's been called for.

But it's inevitable that A) he won't get as many calls as might be appropriate at the offensive end and B) he'll get penalized on occasion for being so big.

It's something Haas had to learn to not let un-nerve him.

Edey has worked in practice on posting up without using his arms and will probably have to develop a hyper-awareness to his eye-level-for-most elbows, but he'll also simply have to roll with the punches at times.

"I've been dealing with too-tall fouls and penalties my whole life in hockey," said Edey, who grew up playing hockey and baseball in Toronto. "I'd make a hit or do certain things and get called for it because it just looks weird 'cause I'm so much taller than everyone. It's something I had to learn when I was younger playing hockey. It was frustrating for me when I first started playing, but being able to move past it and not let it faze me, that's been important."

Painter and his staff have often discussed Edey's diligence toward his improvement, that he has been eager to watch film with coaches each day to run through his mistakes. He's a "visual learner," he says.

"I have a long way to go," Edey said. "I'm not anywhere near being a finished product yet. There's so much more to learn, so much more room to grow."

The fouls and turnovers, in context, are an acceptable trade for all else Edey has provided Purdue this season, but a concern for all parties nonetheless.

"I think once he can curtail that, he's going to be a big weapon in our league," Painter said. "But he's got to get to that point. We've got to keep working with him and helping him."

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