Edey overwhelming choice for Player of the Year
Coach of the Year honors go to Houston’s Sampson
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — While many college coaches passed on the unpolished Canadian prospect as the basketball world became enamored with perimeter play and 3-point shooting, Purdue coach Matt Painter took a swing on his third center in the recruiting class and found a gem who led the Boilermakers to their first Final Four since 1980.
On Friday, Zach Edey collected his second Associated Press Player of the Year award, becoming the first back-to-back winner since Ralph Sampson won three in a row at Virginia from 1981-83. Edey received 57 of 62 votes from journalists who vote in the weekly AP Top 25. Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht received three votes and Houston’s Jamal Shead got two.
Edey is the fifth player to win the award in consecutive seasons though Lew Alcindor also won the award twice in non-consecutive seasons.
“I get to pay him (coach Matt Painter) back. There were so many coaches that looked over me, like you could — name a program — I could name a coach that looked over me,” Edey said. “Tennessee, Rick Barnes is a great coach, but he was at our practice, looked over me. It’s kind of been the story of my life. People have doubted me. People looked past me. Can’t do that anymore.”
A dedicated work ethic and a fiery, steelyeyed determination has turned he 7-foot4, 300-pound Edey from intriguing project into college basketball’s biggest star.
The truth is Painter, who routinely builds his team around big men, almost missed, too. His first two choices in that recruiting class were Hunter Dickinson, who chose Michigan, and Ryan Kalkbrenner, who wound up at Creighton. Dickinson became an All-American with the Wolverines and again at Kansas while Kalkbrenner was a two-time all-Big East selection.
Edey outplayed them all, becoming the first national scoring leader to take his team to the Final Four since Oscar Robertson in 1960.
He heads into Saturday’s matchup against North Carolina State averaging 25.0 points and 12.2 rebounds for a second straight double-double. He also had 2.2 blocks while shooting 62.2% from the field this season, virtually willing the Boilermakers past Tennessee 72-66 in the regional final with a career-high 40 points and 16 rebounds after last March’s shocking first-round loss to 16th-seeded Fairleigh Dickinson.
SAMPSON NAMED COACH OF THE YEAR:
Kelvin Sampson demands excellence at all times, his players say, and the results speak for themselves: Houston won the Big 12 regular-season title in its first year in the league, earned a No. 1 seed in the tournament for the second straight year and advanced through the opening weekend for the fifth time in a row.
The superlative season, which ended with a Sweet 16 loss to Duke during which All-American guard Jamal Shead hurt his ankle, allowed Sampson to narrowly edge UConn’s Dan Hurley for his second Associated Press Coach of the Year award, which was announced Friday.
Sampson received 23 of 62 votes from the national panel that votes for the weekly AP Top 25; balloting closed before the start of the NCAA Tournament. Hurley, whose top-seeded Huskies will play Alabama in the Final Four on Saturday night as they chase a second consecutive national title, finished second with 21 votes.
“He coaches 40 minutes of a 40-minute game. I think that’s what makes us good,” Shead said of Sampson, who also earned AP coach of the year in 1995 with Oklahoma. “He holds us to the same standard, dayin, day-out, practice or game.”
BRONNY DECLARES FOR NBA: Bronny James will enter the NBA draft after one season at Southern California that was shortened by his recovery from cardiac arrest. The freshman announced on his Instagram account that he also plans to retain his college eligibility and will enter the transfer portal.