A lot of time and attention was spent this past offseason on the number of quality bigs returning to college basketball — guys like Kentucky‘s Oscar Tshiebwe, Gonzaga‘s Drew Timme, North Carolina‘s Armando Bacot, Indiana‘s Trayce Jackson-Davis and Michigan‘s Hunter Dickinson. So far, though, Purdue‘s Zach Edey has been the best of the bunch. One month into a five-month season, he’s inarguably the leading candidate for national player of the year.
“I don’t think there’s a team in the country that has an answer [for Edey],” said Minnesota coach Ben Johnson.
Sure looks that way.
Edey finished with a career-high 31 points and a career-high 22 rebounds Sunday in Purdue’s 89-70 win over Minnesota. The 7-foot-4 center is now averaging 23.3 points and 12.8 rebounds, which ranks first in scoring and second in rebounding among all power-conference players. He’s the biggest reason, both figuratively and literally, why the Boilermakers are off to an 8-0 start and ranked third in Monday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings.
Texas remains No. 1. Houston is still No. 2.
Incredibly, Edey grabbed more rebounds (22) in Sunday’s victory than Minnesota’s entire team (21). Fourteen of those were defensive boards, which is why the Golden Gophers were limited to just three offensive rebounds in the game, five fewer than Edey grabbed in 30 minutes on the court.
“The most impressive thing to me was his ability to go get rebounds in and around people,” said Purdue coach Matt Painter. “A lot of time you get bottled up — and when you have that size, it’s hard to have the balance and still explode and get the basketball.”
Up next for Purdue is Wednesday’s game with Hofstra that should present few issues considering the Pride have already lost to Middle Tennessee, George Mason and Saint Mary’s (by 28 points). After that, it’s back to the Big Ten schedule for a trip to Pinnacle Bank Arena, where the Boilermakers will play Nebraska on Saturday.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
Biggest Movers
1
Texas Tech
17
Creighton
