Matt Painter: Purdue's Zach Edey needs the ball even more
Obviously, Purdue is built around Boilermaker center Zach Edey, the starting point of everything Matt Painter and his team want to do offensively. But as Painter sees it, his team is leaving productivity on the floor by not taking even more advantage of Edey’s many advantages around the basket.
“They’re struggling, to be frank with you,” Painter said. “We’ve got guys (facing) the ground, guys who catch the ball up top and don’t look in, guys who dribble in when he’s got his guy buried and they don’t see him. We’re really struggling in that area, and I’m being serious. They have to do a better job of delivering the basketball and getting it to him when he’s open.
“Now, there are going to be people who take it away and when they take it away, now you have to move the basketball and play for the next one, but when he’s open and they miss him, that can happen a couple of times a game. But it’s happening eight to 10 times a game. So we either have to find guys to make improvements there or find new guys. We have some guys who throw the ball in regularly and some who are just real inept in that area.”
Edey’s averaging 12.3 field goal attempts through three games and 6.3 foul shots. He’s “used” on just under 29 percent — a robust number — of Purdue’s possessions, per KenPom. But Painter relayed an anecdote during his radio show last week in which he said a player told him he’d thrown the ball inside “six times” during an early season game. “Throw it in 12 times then,” Painter said he told the player.
During Purdue’s win over Marquette, Edey took just 11 shots.
“I still think there’s times we’re missing him, me included,” junior Ethan Morton said. “It’s kind of a fine line. You don’t want to force-feed him when it’s not there if teams are going to collapse the paint and give you threes. It’s all about how teams are playing us, and when we can get him the ball one on one, we want to do that and when he’s getting doubled we can play out of that and get teams in rotations.”
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Edey said it was an emphasis for Purdue with extra time off this week to work on post entry, especially from the top of the arc, a staple of the Boilermakers’ entry game when Edey has position in the middle of the lane, and thus the option to go left or right.
“I trust my teammates,” Edey said. “They’re not intentionally looking me off. They just don’t see it and have to learn to see it.”
For a team emphasizing communication this season, Edey says he’s been willing to point out misses real time on the bench during games or in film sessions.
“When I’m down there, I’m doing my best to just yell for it, screaming for it, really trying to get their attention,” Edey said. “I’m just trying to make it hard for them to miss me.”
