Matchup to watch in NCAA title game
If Monday’s Purdue vs. Connecticut men’s college basketball national championship game feels anything like a throwback, old-school type of game, it would be in large part because there are two traditional centers going head to head.
One is the Boilermakers’ Zach Edey, the two-time national player of the year who at 7-foot-4 has developed a relationship with Shaquille O’Neal, himself a seven-foot, 300-pound big man in his playing days. Edey was the nation’s leading scorer at 25 points per game and is tearing up the NCAA tournament with at least 20 points and 10 rebounds in six straight tournament games, the firstever player to accomplish that feat.
Edey’s counterpart is 7-foot-2 Donovan Clingan of UConn, who’s turned himself into one of the country’s premier centers.
He went from 9.3 points per game as a freshman last season to 13.5 this season, and has also been a factor on defense.
Edey feels it’s fair to say Clingan will be the best center he’s played this season.
“He’s pretty good. He’s obviously very unique in kind of the way he plays the way he kind of runs the floor, the way he can defend the paint,” Edey said. “He presents some unique challenges that we’re going to have the game plan for.”
Clingan offered mutual respect for his counterpart in the middle. Edey vs. Clingan, dubbed “Big Maple vs. Cling Kong” by one Indiana newspaper, is the premier matchup to watch on Monday night. The Edey nickname stems from him being a native of Canada.
“He’s a force in the ball screen game just the way he gets his position when he’s rolling and seals early. He’s just so dominant the post, you know, he’s able
to finish over both shoulders,” Clingan said of Edey. “So ... I just gotta be real careful with the foul trouble, wall up as best I can and, you gotta realize he’s gonna make a few shots and I have to be all right with that, and just can’t give him and-ones and those extra points.”
Not since 2007, when Florida’s Joakim Noah and Ohio State’s Greg Oden went head to head in a national championship game, has there been this high a level of center play between the principal big men of each team playing for the title.
Noah went on to have a solid NBA career, Oden not so much due to persistent injury problems. Before them, it was Eric Montross against Juwan Howard when North Carolina faced Michigan in 1993.
The 1980s feels like the last time two true centers who more resembled how Edey and Clingan play matched up against each other in an NCAA title game. In 1984, Patrick Ewing of Georgetown faced Hakeem Olajuwon of Houston, and the next year it was Ewing vs. Ed Pinckney of Villanova.
“We have a cheat code, Zach Edey,” Purdue’s Mason Gillis said this week.
Purdue head coach Matt Painter was asked to break down the matchup in the post.
“I think the one thing we do a better job than most people with it is we make ‘em decision-makers. If they’re going to get the ball a lot — (Saturday) like Zach had some turnovers, and let’s watch those turnovers, let’s learn from that. No different than a point guard . ... Let’s watch that and see the mistakes that you’re making, then just grow from that,” Painter said. “But no, Clingan is really good. He changes the game defensively, but offensively he’s a good player, too. He’s just going to keep coming. He’s going to be a fabulous player. He’s got 15 to 20 years in front of him.”
UConn head coach Dan Hurley said he will have to find ways to defend Edey while accounting for Purdue’s good 3-point shooting. It can’t be just one approach.
“He’s a unique player. I don’t think that one thing is going to work in the game. I think you’ve got to try to keep him off balance. Matt (Painter), unfortunately for us, really constructed a great roster around such a unique player,” Hurley said. “Obviously the blind spot for them last year was subpar three-point shooting, which allowed you to surround him, whereas now if you put two on the ball with him, you’re now turning loose a team that’s shooting 40 percent from three. If you single coverage him, even with Donovan, a player of his caliber, he obviously gets fouled a lot or he’s at the free-throw line a lot. So now we’re putting maybe our most impactful player in position to maybe get in foul trouble, which would cause big problems for us at both ends and on the backboard.”
Neither center has ever faced the other team before, and both teams feel they have been college basketball’s best two teams the past two seasons.
“To finally get to go against them and really match up and see how we stack up is going to be amazing,” Edey said.