WEST LAFAYETTE — In 2015, Caleb Swanigan joined the Purdue basketball roster.
Assistant coach Brandon Brantley, who works with Boilermaker post players, knew almost immediately he was training a future NBA talent.
Brantley had no such premonition with his next NBA prospect.
“Caleb Swanigan, everyone pretty much assumed he was going to get to the NBA,” Brantley said of Swanigan, who was a first-round draft pick in 2017. “We didn’t know when, but we knew it would happen. Nobody thought that about Zach.”
In four years, Zach Edey went from project to potential lottery pick, leaving Purdue as the program’s all-time leader in points and rebounds.
Edey dominated college basketball over the past two seasons in a way that hadn’t been witnessed in decades and on Wednesday night, he’ll become the latest Boilermaker selected in the NBA draft.
“It’s kind of crazy,” Edey said. “When you put it like that, it all seems super fast. I just started playing basketball halfway through high school and now I am going to the NBA.”
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Zach Edey’s basketball beginnings
The backstory is well known by now.
Edey grew up a hockey and baseball player, but because of his elite size, people kept trying to push him toward basketball. Edey didn’t want to accept the stereotype he should hoop because he is tall.
But, turns out all those people were right.
Edey picked up basketball on his own terms. He gave up baseball and ended up moving from Canada to the United States to play at IMG Academy in Florida where it was still evident he had a long route of development still as a basketball player.
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Purdue happened to have a need for a center in the 2020 class after Hunter Dickinson (Michigan) and Ryan Kalkbrenner (Creighton) committed elsewhere. Edey became the best consolation signing perhaps in college basketball history.
As Purdue coach Matt Painter has alluded to numerous times over the previous four seasons, Edey arrived with no hype, ranked behind more than 400 high school players in his recruiting class.
Edey came to West Lafayette ready to learn and willing to work relentlessly.
“He didn’t have a lot of baggage coming in,” Painter said. “For him, he just kept getting better. He wanted to learn.”
Purdue basketball’s Zach Edey at NBA combine
Zach Edey spoke to media members at the NBA combine. Hear everything Edey told reporters on Tuesday morning.
‘It was a process’
Edey spent two seasons splitting time with center Trevion Williams.
Before Edey was the two-time consensus National Player of the Year, he was playing an average of 14 minutes a night off the bench as a freshman. Those games were in mostly empty arenas with the coronavirus pandemic still at the forefront of the daily news cycle.
Edey averaged 8.7 points and 4.4 rebounds. Like Brantley said, no one was thinking NBA.
There were flashes of brilliance, though, and just a year later, Edey would be a second-team All-Big Ten selection after a sophomore season where he averaged 14.4 points, 7.7 rebounds and 1.2 blocks in 19 minutes per game.
“For me, it was a process,” Edey said. “It was every day staying in and getting my shots, staying late and watching film with coach B (Brantley).”
At the expense of time with his own family, Brantley was determined to match Edey’s work ethic. As much time as Edey was willing to commit to getting better at basketball, Brantley was equally as enthusiastic to watch Edey’s game materialize.
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“When he was young, he was just so determined to be a good player and reach his potential,” Brantley said.
After Williams graduated and moved on to a professional basketball career, Edey became a player that almost never left the floor in his final two seasons.
Edey is the first repeat men’s basketball National Player of the Year since Ralph Sampson in the early 1980s. And now Edey is on the brink of the NBA, exceeding the ceiling many set for him four years earlier.
What’s next for Zach Edey in the NBA draft?
Nobody’s NBA mock projection is as all over the place as Edey’s.
His name ranges from the top 10 to the end of the first round. Despite a green room invite to the NBA draft in New York, Edey declined and will watch the draft with family and friends privately in West Lafayette.
No surprise, Edey isn’t reading too much into mock drafts.
“Whatever team drafts me is a team that is going to want me,” Edey said. “I don’t really care about what number is beside my name. I just want to go to an organization that believes in me and is going to trust me to be an NBA player.”
Four years earlier, Edey wanted the same thing from a college program.
He found it at Purdue and transformed from basketball upstart to NBA bound 7-foot-4 center.
“He’s put himself in a good spot where he can sneak into the lottery, but he’s definitely going to be a first round pick. You probably should never say definitely, but it looks like his range is somewhere around 9-25,” Painter said. “To put himself in that position, what you want is someone to feel good about you where they have a plan for you. When people draft you that high, they normally do. It doesn’t mean you are ultimately going to be successful.
“His ability to play hard kind of gets shortchanged at times, but it wasn’t by us. We knew how hard he played and how competitive he was. I am excited for his future.”
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter and Instagram @samueltking.