Home Sweet Home: Purdue's Edey shines in first game in Toronto in years

Behold the best Canadian basketball player in U.S. college history.

Or another way: Purdue centre Zach Edey is a sight to behold.

For the first time in his college career, the seven-foot-four mobile eclipse brought his unique brand of hardwood dominance to his hometown as his Purdue Boilermakers hosted the Alabama Crimson Tide as part of a doubleheader at Coca-Cola Coliseum on Saturday.

It was a big moment for the senior centre and the reigning NCAA Division I player of the year, who left Toronto as a seven-foot-and-still-growing 10^th-grader to pursue his basketball potential at the IMG Academy in Florida and – apart from some brief appearances with the senior men’s national team – hasn’t played in front of a home crowd since.

No one left disappointed, other than perhaps the handful of Alabama fans in the building. The Tide got rolled, although it took some time.

The Boilermakers shrugged off a 12-point first-half deficit and were down by nine early in the second half before coming back to win 92-86 and improve to 9-1 on the season. The fourth-ranked team in the U.S. college ranks is setting it sights on being the last team standing at the NCAA Tournament in March and April.

Edey was right in the middle of all the action on Saturday, figuratively, literally, and statistically. The 21-year-old matched his season high and was just off his career best with 35 points on 12-of-21 shooting and a perfect 11-of-11 showing at the free-throw line, where he ended up so often as Alabama’s big men couldn’t properly manage one of the biggest, broadest players in the sport, at any level. Alabama shot 46 threes and made 19 of them – 13 in the first half – but the reliability of Edey in the paint and at the free-throw line was the counterbalance Purdue needed.

“I have seen anything like him [in my career],” said Alabama head coach Nate Oats afterwards. “…He’s huge and he dwarfed [our centre]; all our guys looked a little small next to him. He’s extremely physically imposing and imposed his will on us for 35 points tonight. He’s going to do that to a few teams this year, I think.”

Edey, who won bronze at the FIBA Basketball World Cup this past summer with the senior men’s national team, was a factor from the moment the ball went up. Watching him is a little like watching water run downhill – eventually it’s going to get to where it wants to go. He’s inevitable in that if you defend him perfectly, it means someone else on his team is open and if you don’t have perfect position at the right time, the ball is going in the basket, typically with great force as he showed on a number of rim-rocking dunks. Three times he scored while fouled, making the free throw each time. He was fouled and didn’t score four times and made all of those free throws, too. Both of Alabama’s centres fouled out.

Edey still needs to add polish to his game and his defensive awareness will need to improve at the professional level, but given he’s only played basketball at a competitive level for six years prior to this one, you have to like his trajectory.

“I don’t think there’s any part of my game I’m done on. Every year I’m trying to be a better free-throw shooter, be stronger, be a better passer, be a better rebounder, be a better defender,” Edey told reporters in the build-up to the game. “ … Being able to stay on the floor at the end of the games, for defence was very important to me, being able to stay on the floor at the end of games for free throws is very important to me. So kind of just being able to do a lot of things to help Purdue win, I’m always going to value highly.”

His hard work is paying off.

For Edey, it was business as usual except that he was able to play in front of a significant gathering of his friends and family in his hometown for the first time in a Purdue uniform. They were identifiable, as an entire section of the crowd at mid-court outfitted in Purdue yellow rose almost as one almost any time Edey got the ball and either smashed it through the rim, scored with his surprisingly deft touch or converted from the free-throw line.

It was a busy afternoon for them, in other words, with Edey ending the game having cracked the top-10 in the Indiana school’s all-time scoring list.

“It was really cool,” said Edey. “To be up there with the all-time Purdue greats is definitely an honour, and it’s amazing to be back here. They came out, they showed love. Every time we needed a pick-me-up, the crowd was there for us, every time we went on a little run, the crowd was definitely there for us. It was amazing.”

In early stages of the game, Edey displayed some predictable nerves. There were a couple of fumbled catches and missed shots at the rim, uncharacteristic for the sure-handed big man, but understandable given the near manic attention Alabama was paying to him when he did catch the ball, along with the circumstances.

For Edey playing in his hometown was a new experience. He grew up playing baseball and hockey and didn’t begin taking basketball seriously until he was in Grade 9. His ascension as a top college player and professional prospect came later, after he’d already headed south.

“I came into basketball pretty late,” said Edey. “I have a lot of aunts and uncles that have never seen me play, unless they wanted to come to a random 4 p.m. Saturday AAU game, they haven’t seen me.

“As well as my friends, I went to high school in Grade 11 and 12 in America, so a lot of my friends haven’t seen my play live for a long, long time.”

The decision to play the game in Toronto was a thank-you of sorts from the Purdue program, which Edey has helped lift to the top of the college ranks for three straight years.

“He’s the cornerstone of our program. When you’re the national player of the year and you come back for your [senior] season and you make improvements … being able to schedule this game back here was a great reward for him,” said Purdue head coach Matt Painter. “… Just being able to get him back here and have this experience, and we should do this, for everything he’s done for us.”

Edey’s friends and family as well a loud and enthusiastic contingent of Purdue fans weren’t the only interested observers. A handful of NBA scouts were credentialed for the game to examine the progress of Edey, who is projected to be a second-round pick in next summer’s draft.

It was expected that Edey would turn professional last summer after he swept all of the post-season college player-of-the-year awards, making him the most decorated Canadian to play college basketball at the Division I level. There’s a very good chance he’ll repeat as player of the year, given he arrived home averaging 23.7 points, 11.2 rebounds and 2.9 blocked shots while converting 63.6 per cent of his field-goal attempts and 73.3 per cent of his free throws.

But on the heels of Purdue becoming the second No. 1 seed to lose to a No.16 seed in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last season, the opportunity to right a past wrong was too much to pass up.

“Yeah, obviously that loss was really tough. It took me a little while to get over. I didn't really speak to anyone that night,” he said. “… It took me a little bit to kind of accept that it happened move past it. But at the end of the day, it's in my past, I can't change it. It's part of me. But then attacking this season, that’s the more important thing now.”

After a quick detour north, the plan seems to be unfolding perfectly.