Breaking down battle between Zach Edey, Donovan Clingan for national championship

There isn’t room for both UConn’s Donovan Clingan and Purdue’s Zach Edey down low. On Monday evening, the pair will fight for paint control with a national title on the line. Ahead of the highly-anticipated showdown, On3’s James Fletcher III broke down the literally giant matchup.

“[Donovan Clingan] can play him,” Fletcher said. “Foul trouble will be a storyline. Can Zach Edey bait those fouls that he’s been able to get a lot of people into, and how much can Clingan stay on the floor? Those will be the two things to watch.

“Clingan, he doesn’t play huge minutes. Generally, throughout the course of the season, he’s between 20 to 30 minutes in most of their games. He’s going to have to play I think 30 or above to really stick with Edey and be able to shut him down.”

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Despite being one of the best players in the nation, Clingan averages a mere 22.3 minutes per game. However, Clingan’s minutes have gradually increased throughout the tournament. Most recently, the 7-foot-2 sophomore recorded 29 minutes in UConn’s triumph over Alabama in the Final Four.

UConn will need to squeeze every second it can out of Clingan to slow down Edey. The 7-foot-4 All-American has only sat three minutes in Purdue’s last three games combined. With the national championship trophy on the line, don’t expect Edey to come off the court unless he has to.

Fletcher believes even if Clingan plays a career-high amount of minutes, UConn cannot expect to entirely halt Edey’s production.

“It’s gonna come down to making Edey inefficient,” Fletcher said. “It reminds me in a lot of ways of how I used to watch NBA teams try to guard Kevin Durant in his prime. It was never about keeping Kevin Durant from scoring 30 points.

“It was about making him score in inefficient ways. If he was shooting mid-range fadeaway jumpers, and he had to take two or three of them to get one to go down, that meant that you were you were in that game and you had a chance to beat that team.”

It won’t be an easy task for the Huskies. Edey is shooting a stunning 65.4% from the field in the NCAA Tournament. The reigning AP National Player of the Year is also connecting on 67.3% of his attempts from the free-throw line.

Fans won’t have to wait long to watch the two standout bigs clash. On Monday, UConn and Purdue will square off at 9:20 p.m. ET. The game will be broadcast on TBS.