WEST LAFAYETTE – In 2015, Caleb Swanigan joined Purdue’s basketball roster.
Assistant coach Brandon Brantley, who works with Boilermaker players, knew almost immediately he was coaching a future NBA talent.
Brantley had no such premonition with his upcoming NBA prospect.
“Caleb Swanigan, everyone assumed he was going to make the NBA,” Brantley said of Swanigan, who was a 2017 first round draft pick. “We didn’t know when, but we knew it would happen. Nobody thought that about Zach.”
In four years, Zach Edey went from project to potential lottery pick, leaving Purdue as the program’s all-time leader in points and rebounds.
Edey has dominated college basketball the past two seasons in a way that hasn’t been seen in decades and on Wednesday night he will become the latest Boilermaker selected in the NBA Draft.
“It’s kind of crazy,” Edey said. “When you put it like that, everything seems super fast. I started playing basketball halfway through high school and now I’m going to the NBA.”
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Zach Edey’s Basketball Beginnings
The backstory is already well known.
Edey grew up as a hockey and baseball player, but because of his elite size, people kept trying to push him into basketball. Edey didn’t want to accept the stereotype that he should play basketball because he’s tall.
But it turns out that all these people were right.
Edey learned basketball on his own terms. He gave up baseball and ended up moving from Canada to the United States to play at IMG Academy in Florida, where it was still evident that he still had a long way to develop as a basketball player.
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Purdue needed a center in the 2020 class after Hunter Dickinson (Michigan) and Ryan Kalkbrenner (Creighton) committed elsewhere. Edey became perhaps the best consolation signing in college basketball history.
As Purdue coach Matt Painter has alluded to countless times over the previous four seasons, Edey arrived half-heartedly, ranked behind more than 400 high school players in his recruiting class.
Edey came to West Lafayette ready to learn and willing to work tirelessly.
“He didn’t have a lot of baggage,” Painter said. “For him, he was getting better and better. He wanted to learn.”
‘It was a process’
Edey spent two seasons splitting time with center Trevion Williams.
Before Edey was a two-time consensus National Player of the Year, he played an average of 14 minutes a night off the bench as a freshman. These games took place in mostly empty arenas, with the coronavirus pandemic still at the forefront of the daily news cycle.
Edey averaged 8.7 points and 4.4 rebounds. As Brantley said, no one was thinking about the NBA.
There were flashes of brilliance, though, and just a year later, Edey would be a second-team All-Big Ten selection after a sophomore season where he averaged 14.4 points, 7.7 rebounds and 1.2 blocks in 19 minutes per game.
“For me, it was a process,” Edey said. “Every day it was staying home and getting my shots, staying up late and watching film with Coach B (Brantley).”
At the expense of time with his own family, Brantley was determined to follow Edey’s work ethic. As much time as Edey was willing to commit to improving at basketball, Brantley was equally excited to see Edey’s game come to fruition.
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“When he was young, he was determined to be a good player and reach his potential,” Brantley said.
After Williams graduated and pursued a professional basketball career, Edey became a player who almost never left the court in his final two seasons.
Edey is the first national player of the year in men’s basketball since Ralph Sampson in the early 1980s. And now Edey is on the brink of the NBA, surpassing the ceiling many set for him four years earlier.
What’s next for Zach Edey in the NBA Draft?
No one’s mock NBA projection is as confusing as Edey’s.
Your name goes from the top 10 until the end of the first round. Despite being invited to the NBA draft in New York, Edey declined and will watch the draft with family and friends privately in West Lafayette.
It’s no surprise that Edey isn’t reading much into mock drafts.
“Any team that picks me is a team that will want me,” Edey said. “I don’t really care what number is next to my name. I just want to go to an organization that believes in me and trusts me to be an NBA player.”
Four years earlier, Edey wanted the same thing from a college program.
He found it at Purdue and transformed from basketball rookie to 7-foot-1, NBA-bound center.
“He’s put himself in a good position where he can sneak into the lottery, but he’s definitely going to be a first-round pick. You should probably never say definitively, but it looks like his range is around 9-25,” Painter said. . “To put yourself in that position, what you want is someone to feel good about you, where they have a plan for you. When people call it out so loudly, they usually do.
“His ability to play hard sometimes suffers, but it wasn’t because of us. We knew how hard he played and how competitive he was. I’m excited about his future.”
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sing@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter and Instagram @samueltking.
This article originally appeared in the Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue basketball’s Zach Edey is on the brink of the NBA. How did he get there?
