On Zach Edey, and the things he carried for Purdue basketball (2024)

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Will Berg arrived in West Lafayette, Ind., last year from Sweden, desperately homesick and missing his father, Martin. The two are incredibly close, bonded after they lost Berg’s mother to a battle with alcoholism. Berg didn’t talk about it much to anyone, trying to find a way to fit in with his new team, but as the months continued, the gnaw in his stomach grew. One afternoon in practice, maybe about a month into the season, Zach Edey told Berg to hang in there, that though Canada isn’t quite as far as Sweden, he understood what it was like to transplant yourself entirely on your own.

That evening, Berg went back to his apartment and found a small care package waiting for him, stuffed with candy and a handwritten note, telling Berg to call or text anytime he needed something. Edey had sent the package. “It was such a simple act of kindness,” Berg said, earlier this month, just after recording a thank-you video for the Purdue basketball seniors. “I was blown away.”

Edey has blown away the competition for the last two years, becoming the first back-to-back National Player of the Year since Ralph Sampson, collecting every piece of hardware save the one he wanted the most.

“Z-bo, keep going,” Matt Painter yelled in the final 90 seconds of Monday’s national championship game against UConn. Except the Boilers trailed by 13, and a minute later Painter surrendered. Edey exited State Farm Stadium and college basketball. He had scored 37 points, yanked 10 rebounds, blocked two shots and played 39 minutes. It still wasn’t enough, Edey running into a UConn team as once-in-a-generation as he is. It stung bitterly, Edey gnawing on his bottom lip as he went to the bench and made his way from player to player, coach to coach for hugs before turning, and yanking his jersey over his eyes.

For the last time 💔#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/DGb0ITXRin

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) April 9, 2024

He understandably struggled to explain what it all meant, suggesting that it would be best to leave Purdue people to define his legacy than himself. It is not really that complicated. Edey arrived as the 436th-ranked player in his class on a team that hadn’t tasted a Final Four in more than four decades. He leaves with his jersey hanging from the Mackey Arena rafters, and another banner soon to be on order, the one signifying the Boilermakers’ place in the national title game.

“We won our league back-to-back years by multiple games. First time that’s happened in the Big Ten since I was in kindergarten,’’ Painter said. “We got to the championship game after having a disappointing loss. He got to the Sweet 16. He went to four tournaments. Everybody wants to have the argument about the GOAT, the greatest, but to me, that’s the ultimate separator.”

Perhaps the real definition of Edey will come later, when the people who follow him try to reach a bar that has been raised because of him. Purdue was a very good team before he arrived; he leaves it a great team, a program identifiable in culture, style and purpose. These Boilers are the very culmination of what Painter looked to achieve when he reconstructed his entire approach to coaching a decade ago.

After back-to-back losing seasons, Painter made it his mission to craft Purdue into a recognizable brand, but not in the marketing sense — in how they played, who they were, what they believed in, what they represented. He wanted players he could talk to, even if they didn’t entirely nerd out with him.

“Honestly, I catch maybe 10 percent of what he says. The rest is like this,’’ said Braden Smith, who proceeded to point to his right ear and then away from the left. “But I love talking to him about basketball.’’ He wanted competitors, people who understood the nuanced difference between winning and merely achieving. But he also wanted people who understood the concept of the greater good.

Earlier this month, while prepping those senior videos, the team’s social media team recorded Ethan Morton reading a book for kids, “Pig the Winner.”

Pig was a pug
And I’m sorry to say
He was greedy and selfish in most every way.

The odious dog valued winning at the expense of his friends, and cared about nothing but himself. There are no Pigs at Purdue. A year ago, Morton averaged 25 minutes per game and started 29 of the Boilers’ 35 games. This season, he’s averaging 10 minutes per game and during the Boilers’ NCAA Tournament run has played six minutes entirely, not checking in for the Sweet 16, Elite Eight or either Final Four games. Caleb Furst, a one-time Indiana Mr. Basketball, started 21 games a year ago; he played 27 seconds against UConn, just to give Edey a rest. As a freshman, Mason Gillis started 23 games; this year he’s started zero. “People in this situation, if they shy away from it, say it’s easy or whatever, it’s just not,” Morton says. “It’s hard. It’s really hard, and as a competitor, you don’t like it. You shouldn’t, right? But if we cut the nets down at the end, it would be worth it. That’s it.”

Edey has not sacrificed minutes, but he nonetheless epitomizes that same humility. He is an extraordinarily sized human and an extraordinary basketball player; he is an ordinary 21-year-old college kid otherwise. He’s a horribly messy housemate who never does his laundry and leaves his sneakers all over the place. He says he’s a great poker player; his teammates say he’s terrible. He DoorDashes sushi and excels at napping, Z so good at catching z’s that he has turned it into a superstition. Edey shuts his eyes on game days on the road, timing his wake-up call to 10 minutes before whatever time the bus is scheduled to leave.

He’s chronically on time, which is to say that he’s not necessarily late but bordering it as close as one can. The entire travel party — players, coaches, staff, family, administrators — had boarded the Allegiant charter flight from West Lafayette to Phoenix before Edey piled on. And during the Boilers’ last film session of the season, the last of Edey’s career, he walked in two minutes late, insisting that he had to wait four minutes for the elevators. “Then it stopped on every floor,” he said. Painter just laughed. “Right, because no one else took the elevators.”

“He could be an entitled douchebag,” Berg said. “But he’s not. He’s just one of us.”

Except for the part where he’s not. During this NCAA Tournament, he averaged 29.5 points and 14.5 boards per game, playing in plus 38 minutes in every game since the Sweet 16. He could easily have won the Final Four MOP despite losing (Houston’s Hakeem Olajuwon last did it in 1983).

“What he’s done, I’m not sure anyone appreciates the burden he carried for us,” Carson Barrett said. “He knew he had to give us 30 and 20 every night, and he did. I don’t know if anyone else on this team, I don’t know if anyone else in the country, could do it.”

For all of that he is rightfully adored and oddly vilified. The crowds of Boiler fans swelled over this three-week tournament, from a few dudes with a boom box in Indianapolis, to enough people in Detroit that hotel staffers opted for a single metal barrier to corral everyone, to a near mob in Phoenix that created a roped-off gauntlet that extended from the Hyatt Regency elevators, across the lobby, out the side door and onto the bus. Some people even used the second floor of the parking garage across the street to gain a better vantage point.

They cheered every player with gusto, but none more than Edey, the crowd often dissipating once the Big Maple got on the bus.

Yet to people not wearing the black and gold, Edey became some sort of ogre out to destroy the beauty of basketball. Edey’s dominance, coupled with his size, weirdly turned him into a lightning rod. Opposing fans bemoaned his every paint touch, some calling three seconds even when size 21s weren’t anywhere near the paint, most screaming that he fouled on every possession. UConn coach Dan Hurley nearly lost his mind in the first half after his backup big man, Samson Johnson, picked up his second foul, a common reaction among other coaches.

Edey long ago learned not to react, recognizing that any extra movement could easily be construed as overly forceful because of the sheer size of him. It doesn’t mean he didn’t feel it. He spoke casually about the horrible things people said to him on social media — “You name it. Asian slurs, all of it,’’ he said one day during the Midwest Regional in Detroit — insisting that it taught him to appreciate the people who mattered even more. He doubled down on family, on friends, intent on concentrating on the good, not the bad. But you also get the sense that he kept a sort of internal score.

Mason Gillis has a tattoo that follows the scar line of his surgically repaired knee: “FEWDM,” which stands for F— Everyone Who Doubted Me. Edey quite well could have borrowed it. “He gets more hate for no reason,’’ Smith said. “For what? Because he’s out there dominating everybody. Given all the crap he’s taken, it’s just made me admire him more.”

How it will all be remembered in the grand scheme of things remains to be seen. Sports tends to favor the winners, the runners-up. But within the Purdue locker room, there was no hesitation. As he exited the court, redshirt freshman Cam Heide stopped to scoop up some of the blue and red confetti that fell to the floor after UConn won.

“I’ll probably sleep with it under my pillow,” Heide said. “It’s motivation. What these guys, these seniors, Zach have done, that’s raised the bar for all of us. Now it’s up to us to keep it going, to take the next step and win the national championship.”

As Heide talked about the future, Edey sat at a chair surrounded by reporters, his last formal act as a Boiler.

“We all,’’ Berg said, “just need to say thank you.”

(Top photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

Dana O’Neil, a senior writer for The Athletic, has worked for more than 25 years as a sports writer, covering the Final Four, the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals and NHL playoffs. She has worked previously at ESPN and the Philadelphia Daily News. She is the author of three books, including "The Big East: Inside the Most Entertaining and Influential Conference in College Basketball History." Follow Dana on Twitter @DanaONeilWriter