(Photo courtesy of Purdue)
With Purdue basketball set to officially open preseason practice on Oct. 14, we are keeping busy with a series making projections on each of Purdue's scholarship players, keeping in mind that we are basing such things off less than ever because of this bizarro world off-season. Please keep in mind that more in unknown — to people like us and maybe even to coaches and such — than ever before heading into a season.
Anyway, we continue today with Zach Edey, the first of the newcomers.
Prior Editions: Trevion Williams | Eric Hunter | Aaron Wheeler | Sasha Stefanovic | Isaiah Thompson | Emmanuel Dowuona
The point in his career
Edey's one of three true freshmen and five freshmen of any kind on scholarship, all of which will likely play this season. He's debuting at Purdue after only beginning to play basketball seriously a few years ago – he played hockey and baseball prior — and didn't play leading roles for his elite prep school team at IMG Academy or his grassroots program in the summers. He did reclassify up a year, as well, so his experience level is minimal, although it's probably helpful that the Canadian comes to Purdue from a college-like environment at IMG.
Projected role
Every indication is that Edey's going to play a role for Purdue this season, perhaps a prominent one now that there are questions about Purdue's options behind Trevion Williams at center. It's Edey and Emmanuel Dowuona now that Matt Haarms is gone, and Edey is ahead of Dowuona, it would appear. It's obviously possible both of them play, but Edey seems to have positioned himself well for a decent share of minutes, perhaps sooner in his career than Purdue may have figured when it recruited him. Edey's size sets him apart on this roster, and it's something Purdue would look to leverage at both ends of the floor. He's supposed to have more offensive skill than a lot of guys his size. How much that comes out right away, who knows?
Best case scenario
The best case is that Edey learns quickly, holds up physically — he needs added strength over the course of his career — and acclimates well to the speed and intensity of basketball at this level and gives Purdue adequate, solid minutes off the bench when Williams is out of the game, setting him up for improvement in Year 2 and for the balance of his Purdue career. Honestly, Purdue just needs those backup centers to be reliable, to know what they're doing and to try hard.
Worst case scenario
Obviously, the worst case for any freshman is that they're just not ready and in the case of big guys, that they're either overwhelmed physically or by the speed of the game, they foul too much and they just can't cut it. Edey seemed on paper like a textbook redshirt candidate when he signed, but things have changed with Haarms gone, and he's done enough prior to preseason practice, it seems, to work himself out of that conversation anyway. He has to play and while early returns have been positive, you never know until they play.
Reasonable expectations
Tough call, because Edey doesn't have a lot of body of work prior to Purdue to draw opinions from, and it's not like there's a whole lot of 7-foot-3 guys running around college basketball. You never know. Our guess is he plays meaningful minutes for Purdue and certainly has his ups and downs. Purdue will hope for more ups than downs and the first step of what could be a solid career. Purdue's done a solid job developing big men over the years and here's its next project in that sense.
