Zach Edey's show vs. Grambling was 'kind of unreal.' And it sent a message to everyone.
Gregg Doyel- Purdue vs. Utah State, 2:40 p.m., Sunday; TV: CBS
INDIANAPOLIS – It’s midway through the second half and Braden Smith is on the Purdue bench for the first time all night, finally getting a rest, finally looking at the scoreboard, and what he sees up there is making him giggle. Literally he’s looking at the numbers next to Zach Edey’s name, all those points and all those rebounds in the Boilermakers’ eventual 78-50 victory against Grambling State in their 2024 NCAA tournament opener, and he’s elbowing the Purdue staffer next to him, P.J. Thompson. Now Smith’s pointing at the scoreboard and saying something and laughing some more. He wants Thompson to see those numbers, too.
This is Edey’s fourth season at Purdue. He holds school records for career points and rebounds, and pretty soon he’ll be named the consensus national player of the year for a second consecutive season. He’s done some things, in other words, but this is preposterous. With 11 minutes in the game, the scoreboard shows Grambling with 18 rebounds. It shows Zach Edey with 20 rebounds.
More:Purdue's Zach Edey is the center of attention vs. Grambling State
“That’s what I was pointing out,” Smith’s telling me shortly after the game ends, as he’s walking off the court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse following a quick national radio interview Westwood One. “Those rebounds. That’s crazy.”
The whole stat line was crazy. Edey finished with 30 points, 21 rebounds and three blocks, becoming the first player to reach 30-and-20 in an NCAA tournament game since Maryland’s Joe Smith in 1995. Only one other player has reached those numbers — 30-and-20 in the NCAA tourney — in the past 50 years: IU’s Kent Benson in 1975.
Edey scored Purdue’s first basket, a dunk. He scored Purdue’s second basket, another dunk. Smith was on an early heater of his own, making a trio of 3-pointers in the first eight minutes, but he was shooting only when he had to, because Grambling insisted on covering Edey with one player, and Smith was trying to get him the ball every time.
“Personally I’d send two or three guys at him,” Smith was saying later.
Not sure that would’ve mattered. Not on this night.
Zach Edey was sending a message.
Grambling on Zach Edey: "Kind of unreal"
Edey wanted all the rebounds. At one point Grambling was missing a jumper and two players were going for the rebound and Edey got there first, reaching far above the other guy to control the rebound, and the other guy was cringing like he’d just seen a ghost.
The other guy was Edey’s 6-9 teammate, Trey Kaufman-Renn, and Kaufman-Renn's been here three years. He’s seen some things too, you know, but this was Edey deciding that every loose ball was his, and he was going to pursue first and ask questions later, and Kaufman-Renn was making a face, like: Yikes!
Those were almost the words coming from the Grambling side after this game by Edey.
“I don’t think anybody has seen anything like Zach Edey,” Grambling guard Kintavious Dozier said afterward.
Edey saves his emotion for the court, deadpanning his way through every interview I’ve ever seen him do, and he was stoic through this one, too. When it was suggested to him that he’s done some things in college basketball, but has never had a game like this on this stage — fine, I was the one who suggested it — Zach Edey very politely put me in my place.
“You say it’s a big stage,” he said, “but it’s just basketball at the end of day.”
But then he kept going, and opened a window into the motivation behind this particularly monstrous game.
“I came out, tried to set the tone, tried to play as hard as I can, trying to send a message to the team — we’re ready, we’re good,” he said. “Send a message to the country: We’re good.”
He’s talking about last season, of course. The loss to FDU in the first round of the 2023 NCAA tournament. And maybe the season or two before that, when Purdue was eliminated by 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s in 2022 and 13th-seeded North Texas in 2021.
Around the country, the ghouls and jerks are waiting for Purdue to fail again. The Purdue locker room knows it. So does the Purdue coach. They discussed it at length Thursday, in front of all those cameras during the news conference and then in quieter surroundings of the locker room. Almost to a man, Purdue’s players expressed fatigue or even anger with the reaction elsewhere. Even coach Matt Painter was telling me, privately, that he was surprised at “the volatility” of the reaction.
Did you read over a small part of the last paragraph? Almost to a man, it says.
Because Edey wasn’t showing fatigue or anger or surprise or anything. He was doing what he does, saving his emotion for the game. Poor kids from Grambling. They never had a chance.
“Kind of unreal,” Dozier said of Edey. “What they say he is on paper — he’s exactly that.”
Edey and Smith and Loyer, oh my!
This was nearly a perfect start for Purdue, by the way. The Boilers have that recent NCAA tournament history, those losses, and there are some common threads. Edey or Trevion Williams is shut down, or the backcourt is erratic, or turnovers are a problem.
“Rebounding and turnovers,” Painter had told me the day before. “It sounds so easy, but it really is that simple.”
Purdue outrebounded Grambling 48-23, and had a better than 2-to-1 ratio of assists (23) to turnovers (10). The opposition will get dramatically better from here, but we’ve seen Purdue lose to inferior teams before on this stage. What we’ve not seen is Purdue destroying another team simply because it could.
“We did what we’re supposed to do,” Edey said of this 28-point blowout. “I don’t think anybody on this team expects any praise for it. We did what we’re supposed to do, and we’re onto the next one.”
And they’re onto the next one, Utah State on Sunday, with all kinds of good vibes. Smith, the sophomore point guard who hit the freshman wall last season, had 11 points, 10 assists and no turnovers. Loyer, the sophomore shooting guard who hit that freshman wall even harder last season, hit his first three shots — two 3-pointers and a driving layup in the final seconds of the first half — and was raising his eyebrows and celebrating both 3s with the crowd, hearing their cheers and matching it with his own:
Whoooo!!!
After a relatively close first half thanks to the fearlessness of the 6-1 Dozier — who scored 12 of his 16 points in the first 20 minutes — Purdue ran away with it in the second half, with the crowd looking for new reasons to get excited. Braden Smith and Cam Heide gave them one, an alley oop in transition that we’ll see on future Purdue pregame montages. Walk-on Carson Barrett, a 6-5 senior from Lafayette Central Catholic, gave them another by burying a 3-pointer with 33 seconds left for the game’s final points.
But the biggest cheer came during a timeout late in the second half, when the Purdue band was playing that old arena standby, “Hey Baby (will you be my girl?)” The giant videoboard was showing fans dancing, and when it latched onto Julia Edey singing along and busting some moves, the Purdue crowd went nuts. Because her boy is Zach Edey, and he was on the way to 30 points and 21 rebounds, and it was kind of unreal.
And it’s true, you know. What they say Zach Edey is on paper — he’s exactly that.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.