Zach Edey is now Purdue Basketball's foundation. What more can he do?

It may be an exaggeration to suggest that everything Purdue does at both ends of the floor this season will revolve around Zach Edey, but not that much of one. The Boilermaker center and preseason All-Big Ten pick now takes his turn as Matt Painter’s program’s signature player, that foundational role inherited from all the fine big men who’ve come through Mackey Arena over the years.

After splitting time the past two seasons at center with Trevion Williams, Edey now takes the position over. Purdue, per usual, will have tremendous depth at the 5, with promising forwards Caleb Furst and Trey Kaufman-Renn behind him. But Edey is now the face of Purdue’s modern basketball identity.

He’s gigantic and he’s going to get the ball a lot, as so many other post players who’ve come through West Lafayette have.

It’s the 7-foot-4, 300-some-pounder’s broad shoulders on which the Boilermakers’ fate most likely rests this season.

But what more can Edey do as his role and responsibility expand?

Well …

PLAY MORE

Naturally, a player as big as Edey may have a natural cap on his minutes.

He never played more than 27 in a game last season, but it can be noted that one of the occasions he played that season-high total was the Boilermakers’ epic overtime win at Illinois, in which Edey was dominant in a head-to-head meeting with long-time Purdue nemesis and Big Ten scourge Kofi Cockburn.

But for every game like that one, there were a whole bunch of 15-, 16- and 17-minute sorts of games. Edey played 20 or more minutes just once in the postseason.

Is he going to go from an average of 18.9 minutes per game last season to 30 or some such number now?

Unlikely.

“I’d take like a really good 25-28 minutes,” said assistant coach Brandon Brantley, who coaches Purdue’s big men. “Thirty, that’s a lot. I’d rather take less minutes but higher quality, because we’ve still got incredible depth on the front line.”

That said, Edey has focused this off-season — whether he was with Purdue or his native Canada’s national team organization — on his conditioning. Asked of his priorities for this season, how he might be “better,” he points to his ability to “play more.”

“We really locked in on conditioning this year as a team in general and that’s one of his big things (emphases),” Edey said. “I think that’s really helped me.”

But …

“You can run up and down the floor touching (end) lines all you want, but that’s only half of conditioning,” Edey said. “The other half is playing strong post defense, running laterally on ball screens, posting up deep, a lot of other things other than just running that’ll test your conditioning.”

There are other tests to Edey’s availability, though, too, namely fouls.

Purdue believes its frontcourt is as high-quality as any in college basketball, but that doesn’t mean Matt Painter won’t dread the prospect of an early foul call against Edey here and there. Whether he gets the same quick hook he’d have gotten last year with Trevion Williams behind him remains to be seen, but if Purdue’s going to build around Edey, it will want Edey on the floor through at least that first media timeout, if not the second. For a player who’ll want to set a physical tone for his team from the outset who sometimes gets penalized for things he can’t control, that’s a fine line.

“It’s something you learn as you play,” Edey said. “You choose when to be aggressive. You don’t want to pick up those irrelevant fouls, like my freshman year. … Sometimes you’re going to get fouls just by playing the game, but it’s avoiding those unnecessary fouls.”

CARRY PURDUE’S OFFENSE

On a team with an unproven offensive corps around Edey, his scoring comes to the forefront, which should be no cause for concern for someone who averaged a mere 30-and-a-half points per 40 minutes last season. Purdue needs Edey being efficient on his high-percentage touches, keeping his turnovers down and maxing out his free throw opportunities within reason, and if he does those things, gaudy numbers will take care of themselves.

But this year, there’s another layer of responsibility that comes with expanded prominence.

As the likely focal point of defenses’ scouting reports — nothing new, but more pronounced now — Edey also becomes arguably Purdue’s most important offensive decision-maker given the volume of touches he’ll draw.

Purdue’s approach to post offense: If you’re one-on-one, score; if you’re double-teamed, pass. That may mean throwing the ball back out to the perimeter to get it moving around against a scrambling defense, or it may mean looking for the 4 man diving to the rim when his defender comes over to double, as many teams use their power forward to do.

“Making the right play all the time,” Edey said of his role this season. “Sometimes if it’s a weak double team, you can break it, but if it’s a good double team, it’s about getting the ball out of your hands. The worst thing you can do when someone doubles you is just to hold the ball, turn it over, maybe travel. Getting the ball out of my hands and making quick decisions is something I’ve really been working on.”

Asked if he wants defenses to double-team him, Edey — sometimes a man of few words — said flatly, “Yes.”

IMPROVING DEFENSIVELY

For as much as Purdue will play through Edey offensively, opponents will attack him every bit as much, hoping to put the big man on islands in ball screen action to take him away from the basket and put him in less comfortable positions. That’s modern basketball for traditional centers nowadays.

“He’s going to get more minutes, so staying out of foul trouble (is important) for one thing. But just getting better in ball screen coverage and — he’s a pretty good post defender — just getting better at protecting the rim,” said assistant coach Paul Lusk, who coordinates Purdue’s defense. “He’s done some things here. Zach’s been a guy who’s going to keep adding layers to his games, and another layer he’s going to have to add is the defensive side of it with his size, being able to be a good pick-and-roll defender.”

For Edey, playing drop coverage in ball screen containment has been a science he’s continually improved with, a difficult balance to strike between being back on one’s heels and up on one’s toes all at once.

“You want to keep the ball-handler in check while also keeping (the roll man) close to you,” Edey said. “It’s not an easy coverage. It may not look like the hardest thing to do, but there’s a lot you have to think about when you’re doing it.”

Similarly, Purdue has sometimes needed Edey out farther on the perimeter than he’d probably prefer to be when the opposing center can shoot threes. Michigan’s Hunter Dickenson, for example.

Here’s a difference this year, though. Edey sees such matchups in practice every day.

Asked at Big Ten media day in Minneapolis a few weeks back who his most difficult matchup would be this season, Edey said, “Caleb Furst every day in practice.”

Part of that was Edey simply not being eager to hype an upcoming opponent, but also a reflection of the difficulties Furst poses for him with his speed, quickness and knock-down three-point shooting.

“I’d play in games guarding the perimeter when I hadn’t really worked on that in practice. Now I can work on it more in practice, playing gaps, playing in help, being really up on ball screens, things like that.”

THE FOUL LINE

Last season, Edey drew 185 fouls in a little more than 700 minutes. That’s a staggering 10.6 fouls per 40 minutes.

And it’s been well-documented — and will assuredly be again this season — that he draws probably only a portion of the fouls actually committed against him.

He’s one of college basketball’s ultimate foul magnets and the benefits of that for Purdue go well beyond his own productivity.

That said, Edey averaged just under 10 free throw attempts per game last season, but his percentage dipped from 71.4 percent as a freshman to 64.8 last season.

For whatever it’s worth, he was 7-of-7 during Purdue’s Fan Day scrimmages and 3-of-4 in the scrimmage against Cincinnati.

“I’m just a lot more confident at the line,” Edey said. “I put up a lot of shots in the off-season and need to keep working on it, keep getting more shots. I changed little things, like last year I always dribbled twice, and this year I’m just dribbling once. Just little things to help me resent mentally at the line. I felt like last year was an outlier, not my normal. I’m trying to get back to my normal.”

“Personally I’d like to see him become more of a leader and being more aggressive in calling for the ball, dominating the glass and as a defensive player, protecting the rim a little more.”

— Assistant coach brandon brantley on zach edey