Zach Edey's road from Legacy Courts to a Legacy

“If you played against - if you were on LSU’s team when Shaq was there, like how would you describe that in practice?"

Trey Kaufman-Renn is trying to describe the Zach Edey experience. Kaufman-Renn has joined Edey in the starting lineup this season, but for the last three years, he has had to go up against Edey time after time after time. His response sounds like hyperbole until you realize that after what Zach Edeys' done at Purdue, he belongs in the rarified air with the best of the giants of the game before him.

On Saturday, Zach Edey scored his 2,324 point of his college basketball career.

His record breaking basket was a showcase exhibit of the work Edey has put in to evolve and shape shift from a long-haired kid from Toronto to a close-cut eater of worlds at Purdue. It also spit in the face of the 'he's just tall' crowd. The record breaking shot was as many were before, less about happenstance and standing tall, but more about the grueling hours of work put in behind the scenes away from the shiny lights and profanity that now follows Edey into every arena across the country.

Edey's hook shot from eight foot while falling away was a picture perfect showcase of Edey's unusual soft touch, honed by those hours with Assistant Coach of the Year in the Big Ten, Brandon Brantley.

Brantley has sculpted big after big, from AJ Hammons to Caleb Swanigan, Isaac Haas to Trevion Williams, but no one has been bigger or grown more than Edey under Brantley's tuteledge.

Sometimes familiarity can lead to complacency so it's good to mention the facts again.

Zach Edey came to Purdue unheralded, a recruit outside the top-400 that was playing as a back up at IMG Academy after deciding basketball would be his future and his family packed up his bags and sent him to Florida all the way from Canada.

Edey didn't pick up a basketball until he was halfway through high school. His formative years did not including learning to do the things that most basketball players can do by the age of six. When he got to Purdue, he couldn't dribble. He couldn't pass.

Purdue University is a basketball school. Indiana is a basketball state. Glenn Robinson, Joe Barry Carrol, and Rick Mount all played at Purdue.

In the state of Indiana, corn and soy beans are planted throughout the state for the sole purpose of giving dusty half courts a proper background setting for which Hoosiers and Boilermakers to learn to shoot from.

Zach Edey is the all-time leading scorer and rebounder at Purdue.

Zach Edey was not supposed to be a Boilermaker.

"When he reclassed, we had lost out on two guys," Matt Painter is telling media at the end of the regular season. "The guys we lost out on were Hunter Dickinson and Ryan Kalkbrenner, those were the two guys."

Hunter Dickinson, of course, would end up up north in Ann Arbor before transferring this season to finish his career at Kansas.

Ryan Kalkbrenner is a 3x Big East Defensive Player of the Year at Creighton.

Zach Edey's introduction to Purdue basketball was not gentle.

Edey's freshman year was a strange one, with COVID in full effect, lockdown and protocols made it that the team couldn't get together on campus. Instead, players had to organize their own games away from campus.

One problem with that, the first get together was the same day that Zach Edey got onto campus.

It's 850 kilometer from Toronto, Ontario to Purdue University. That's a bit over 500 miles, and about 10 hours on the road. It's a drive Edey and his mother, Julia, made the day of the first open gym.

I'd heard this story, first from assistant coach Sasha Stefanovic, and then PJ Thompson. Then I couldn't stop asking about it, from Carson Barrett to Chase Martin, what about that open gym at Legacy Courts?

"It's competitive," Thompson tells me first, he was a GA at the time and is Purdue's offensive coordinator now, and was fresh off his professional playing career. He had brought a couple different dudes with him to play in the open gym. "You win, you stay on. You lose, you don't. I think we had two courts going on at Legacy, too... It's a chance for you to play without coaches being there. Chance for you to be a little more free."

"I was one of the early guys there," Barrett said, a former walk-on that joined as part of the same class as Edey. "And saw this huge dude walk in, duck underneath the doorways, and he had a head full of hair and looked skilly and frail. Looked awkward. The only thing he really says is, 'Yeah, just had a ten hour drive from Canada here. My mom just dropped me off. So let's play.'"

Blink, and four years later, that once mop-haired kid is sitting in the locker room after his last Big Ten Tournament game. Edey is still massive, even sitting, he seems to take up the entire locker room. We're almost eye level.

I ask him about it, that open gym four years ago.

"Oh man," Edey says, voice booming, a bit of a smile coming to his face. "I remember I had a lot of hair. I was straight off the bus. I didn't even unnpack my things. Literally, I was going to unpack my stuff and everybody was heading to the gym."

"I was like, 'Oh, I guess I'm going to the gym with them.' I'm not missing out on the first open gym while I'm here. So I went. I was out of shape. I was bad. It was like straight out of lockdown. In Canada especially, it was really tough to do. You can't even go outside in Canada until two weeks before I was headed to Purdue basically."

"It was rough for me. I was trying to push through some things. It just felt like - everything felt so wild. Like damn, I've got to play like this? This is the level I've got to get to?"

"I remember like I had a fast break and I was so out of shape, I was so tired. I went to lay it up instead of dunk it. And Emmanuel Dowuona, who was here at the time, came from behind like Lebron and beat it off the backboard. I was like, 'Oh my god. What am I doing here?'"

Zach Edey breaks the All-Time rebounding record on the road against Ohio State, a loss, just the third of the season for Purdue.

The sky seems to be falling a bit in Purdue land - or at least Twitter would have you think so. Purdue is still in command of the season, its goals are still ahead, and the players are level if not a little pissed off. It's turnovers and missed shots. It's always turnovers. But no one asks Edey or Painter about the rebounds, or the record after the game.

Against Wisconsin, in the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament, Purdue loses again, just the fourth time this season.

Braden Smith, Zach Edey, and Matt Painter get up on the podium. It's the first question I ask to Smith.

Smith answers and when he talks about Edey the loss doesn't touch him. Then Edey and Smith leave, and it's Painter's turn. Painter talks about the loss, the turnovers, and the silver lining.

The last question I ask is about Edey, the record, and it's one that Painter has answered a few dozen times at this point. What has Edey meant to this program? Each time, Painter tends to add something new, another gem of reflection about the very best player he's coached.

"It's fabulous, man," Painter says about Edey breaking the scoring record. "Being the all-time leading scorer and rebounder at a school like Purdue with great basketball is really unbelievable. You look at both those awards with Joe Barry Carroll and Rick Mount, who are just legends at Purdue, and for him to be able to do that and be humble."

Northwestern fans chant it. Indiana fans, too. Illinois fans, well, you aren't surprised, are you? They say it, too.

Like it's clever or a curse or deserved.

The Big Ten has watched Edey lay waste to the league for the last two years, and since the players on the court haven't come up with an answer for it, the student population tries.

F--- you, Edey.

The obscenities are less vulgar than the claims that it's because he's 'just tall'.

Zach Edey was supposed to redshirt. He wasn't ready.

Until he was.

"It was during summer workouts," Edey tells me about the time that he discovered his game the way Happy Gilmore discovered how to play golf. "We would just like play - I was playing one on one with Trevion [Williams], who I knew was a really good player. And he was guarding me pretty well, pretty physical. And Coach was just like go up and under. So I went up and under and dunked it."

"And I was like, 'That was pretty easy. I should do that again.'"

"It's unbelievable. We're all super proud of him," Smith said about Edey's accomplishment.

"Away from the court - he's more normal than most people would give him credit for," Trey Kaufman-Renn said about Edey.

"He's just always eating and ducking under doors," Camden Heide said... What? They're not always sentimental about the big man.

"I don't know if he'll remember," Chase Martin told me about that first open gym. "But I got him with a hesi."

But before his teammates could believe in him, Edey had to find it in himself.

"I remember there was a two week stretch where Paint went out. He had COVID," Edey tells me after the Wisconsin game. "And for two weeks it was just me and the assistant coaches. It was really weird freshman year because we would do it by rooms. Cause you couldn't have the full team practicing together. So like me and my room which was: me, Trevion, Brandon [Newman], Jaden [Ivey]."

"I just started feeling more comfortable in those two weeks, and then Paint came back and he saw that, too, and I could kind of feel that he really started to believe in me. I started feeling really good with myself."

Zach Edey did not redshirt.

A few minutes later, Matt Painter is alone on the podium at another Big Ten Tournament. Edey and Smith have just walked off, obligations met.

When Edey is done at Purdue, there will be large shoes to fill. No, stay with me.

You see, Painter knows what I know, what you know, too, if you've been paying attention. If you haven't let the dominance make a cynic of you, too.

"He's a good teammate," Matt Painter starts to finish an answer from earlier. "He's a selfless player. He's competitive. He's everything you want in a player."

"I've never seen somebody so good get so much shit for no reason. You know what I mean?"

At times like these, the humanity of Painter reaches beyond his coaching pedigree, past his record, and it traps you in that moment.

"It just blows my mind. All the things that happen and go on in a game just because. People with his size are normally not very good at basketball. He's really good. So he gets a lot of attention. He's stayed grounded, man. He's stayed grounded. He keeps his composure, and we're proud of him for everything he's accomplished."

Zach Edey could have left for the NBA last summer. No one would have blamed him. He didn't have anything to prove. He was the best player in college basketball last year. He's the best player in college basketball this season.

He is Purdue's all time leading scorer and rebounder. He's college basketball's most divisive figure despite no wrong doing of his own.

Something, something, about Batman and becoming the villain.

In Indiana, college basketball used to go in a certain way. Now the state runs through West Lafayette, thanks in part to one tall piece of Toronto.

Strange times, but there's still one piece missing. Zach Edey's final chapter will try to fill in a plot hole that escaped him last year.

I started talking to the players about this senior class over a month ago. One of the first players I asked about Edey was Fletcher Loyer.

"What's been really cool about him is he'd rather win a National Championship than a National Player of the Year, and I think that's what we're going to remember about him twenty years from now," Loyer told me then.

Purdue is all but guaranteed an NCAA Tournament that runs through Indianapolis which means twenty years from now will start on Friday for Edey and Purdue.

When Zach Edey leads Purdue onto the court Friday, college basketball's best player will get a chance to write itself a proper fairy tale ending to college basketball's best story.