GLENDALE, Ariz. – Zach Edey’s Friday morning was consumed with accepting awards, which is a more common exercise for him than most humans. Just in the past month, he has been named The Sporting News Player of the Year, the Big Ten Conference Player of the Year, the NCAA Midwest Region Most Outstanding Player and, on this day he received Oscar Robertson Trophy from the United States Basketball Writers and the Associated Press Player of the Year honor.
Edey soon will become only the third player to twice be named unanimous national player of the year, joining Robertson of Cincinnati (1959, 1960) and Jerry Lucas of Ohio State (1961, 1962). He will be the sixth to earn consensus status as NPOY, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1967, 1969) and Bill Walton of UCLA (1972, 1973, 1974) and Ralph Sampson of Virginia (1982, 1983).
Each of those players appeared at least once in the NCAA Final Four, and now Edey has joined them with the Purdue Boilermakers – having scored 41 points to help defeat Tennessee in the regional final.
MORE: Edey helps Purdue erase decades of disappointment with Final Four berth
So why not pose the inevitable question: How high up the ladder of college basketball’s all-time greats has Zach Edey climbed – and how many more rungs might be available to him if he were to lead the Boilers to a championship win on Monday night?
“I think the biggest problem right now is people look at: Oh, he’s not the NBA prospect. Which is really sad,” Big Ten Network analyst and former Illinois coach Bruce Weber told The Sporting News. “What he’s done consistently, two years in a row and now getting them here – and obviously if he can win Monday night, it would put him with that elite group.
“He is a special, special player in the history of our game.”
The greatest challenge is to answer how special, but the group of players in that multi-time player of the year category all would rank inarguably among the sport’s giants.
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Where does Zach Edey rank among all-time greats?
In October 2002, The Sporting News published my second book on the sport, titled “Legends of College Basketball.” The idea was to compile a list of the top 100 players in the game’s history and present essays about each of their accomplishments and impact.
When I was on the recruiting trail during the summer I wrote the book, I would encounter coaches who would ask what I’d been up to during the offseason. When I described the project, the inevitable response I received: “Who’s No. 2 after Kareem?”
Indeed, Abdul-Jabbar’s career at UCLA made him an easy choice for No. 1. The rest of the top 10, in order: Walton; Robertson; Bill Russell, San Francisco; Pete Maravich, LSU; David Thompson, NC State; Elvin Hayes, Houston; Larry Bird, Indiana State; Lucas and Christian Laettner, Duke.
Edey is not cracking that list, even if he averages 75 points per game at his first and only Final Four.
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As he approaches the end of a second consecutive season in which he stands as unanimous national Player of the Year, though, he has authored a legacy that would place him very prominently on that top 100 list if “Legends” ever were to be updated.
In the years since, the “one-and-done” phenomenon has limited the legacies of many who were gifted enough to place on that list: Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, Zion Williamson, Greg Oden. Such players as Tyler Hansbrough of North Carolina, Jameer Nelson of Saint Joseph’s, Jalen Brunson of Villanova and Joakim Noah of Florida probably would find a place in the top 100.
Edey, though, likely would be in the neighborhood of the top 35 as it stands.
And a win Monday night would push him to the border of the top 20.
| Season | PPG | RPG | BPG | FG% |
| 2020-21 | 8.7 | 4.4 | 1.1 | 59.7 |
| 2021-22 | 14.4 | 7.7 | 1.2 | 64.8 |
| 2022-23 | 22.3 | 12.9 | 2.1 | 60.7 |
| 2023-24 | 25.0 | 12.2 | 2.2 | 62.4 |
“What he’s accomplished is extraordinary. His imprint on the Purdue program and their success is extraordinary,” legendary analyst Bill Raftery, who’ll call the Final Four for Turner Sports, told TSN. “He doesn’t get the recognition because I don’t think he’s as athletic as the others, or as pretty to watch, and I think big guys always have something to prove to the rest of us mere mortals.”
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One of the remarkable elements of Edey’s presence in this discussion is that every other one of the Player of the Year repeaters left high school already a legend. There’s a documentary about what Robertson meant to Crispus Attucks’s Indiana state title and what that title meant to the sport. When Abdul-Jabbar was at Power Memorial High, he was known to basketball fans from coast to coast. Every major power from North Carolina to Kentucky and beyond wanted Sampson. Edey was ranked No. 33 in the 2022 recruiting class – among state of Florida prospects. Wait, he was ranked No. 75 – at the center position.
In reality, Edey was considered to be No. 436 in his class.
Late to the sport, more interested in baseball and hockey growing up in Toronto, he attended IMG Academy when he chose to get serious about basketball as a high school sophomore. He played on the school’s second team, called IMG Blue, while Armando Bacot and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl were the bigs on the “varsity”.
Now, Edey stands with 2,459 career points and 1,299 rebounds, both figures third all-time in the Big Ten Conference. He has scored more points than Abdul-Jabbar, Walton or Sampson; the first two played when freshmen were ineligible, but Walton would not have matched Edey even by repeating his most productive season.
“Those great names you’re talking about, they sort of did more things in peoples’ minds,” Raftery said. “He’s worked on his game and raised it to an extraordinary level. He’s certainly competitive.
“I think people are reluctant to give him his due. He doesn’t have a spin-dribble. He doesn’t have a jumpshot. He’s not floating through the air. But every defensive scheme has been used, and he’s been capable of countering with a counter move, or competing against some of the great coaches in the game. You can’t do the same things against him.”
