The play ended with Zach Edey and Nolan Winter back to back, Winter bent over at the waist and Edey splayed across his shoulder blades. They wound up there, in an awkward reverse piggyback while fighting for a rebound on the final day of the regular season, only after their forearms got wrapped around one another like dueling boa constrictors.
Fans in Mackey Arena, angry that their Purdue big man got tangled up, voiced their displeasure, while Wisconsin coach Greg Gard, convinced his big man got the brunt of the workover, voiced his. Amid the din, officials Doug Sirmons, Brian Dorsey and Kelly Pfeifer went to the monitors to review it all. On the broadcast, Fox analyst Robbie Hummel deadpanned, “There’s a lot to unpack there.”
The hardest job in college basketball is not defending Zach Edey; it’s officiating a game in which he plays. The Athletic talked to five recently retired officials and coordinators and one currently working to ask them about the challenge that Edey presents. They all agreed that the big man is no picnic, not just because of his size (7 feet 4, 300 pounds) but also because of the scrutiny he brings to every possession, let alone every game.
Whistles and no-calls merit equal attention. Big Ten coaches and opposing fans screeching about the first, Purdue fans enraged at the second. Northwestern coach Chris Collins earned himself an ejection after storming the court to vent his frustration after Edey earned 17 trips to the free-throw line while Collins’ entire team took eight from the charity stripe. And an irate Tom Izzo, when asked by Fox during a timeout of Michigan State’s Big Ten tournament quarterfinal against Purdue how his team might better defend Edey, bristled. “I don’t like how it’s being called. How’s that?” And in a tourney semifinal, Edey alone fouled out three Wisconsin players.
Yet the chorus of caterwauling that has trailed Purdue throughout this season has not even reached its crescendo. That comes now. The NCAA Tournament is upon us. Everything matters more in March, including every foul call.
“You have to watch him on every single play, get your head on a swivel,” says former NCAA coordinator of officials J.D. Collins, who retired from his position in 2022. “If he’s setting a screen, posting up, dunking, every single play he’s involved in, we need to decide if it’s legal or a foul.”
Way back in 1687, Sir Isaac Newton penned a book in which he laid out his three laws of motion. Among them, the physicist author argued that when two bodies interact, they apply forces to one another that are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
Sir Isaac did not anticipate Zach Edey. Edey is one of one. There are other 7-footers in college basketball. There might even be a few players pushing 300 bills. There is no other 7-foot-4, 300-pound player in college basketball, and thereby, any matchup Edey enters into is automatically a mismatch. “His elbows are not only as big as some people’s heads,” says former official Bo Boroski, who retired in 2022 after 22 years of working games. “They’re also at most people’s head level.”
If you have an older sibling, you might remember a taunt where he or she placed the palm of his/her hand on your forehead, extended his/her forearm and promptly made it impossible for you to swing your much punier and shorter arms and connect a punch. This is what it is to guard Edey. “You’re not going to move him,” says Rich Boyages, the Big Ten’s former coordinator of officials. “You can try. You’re not.”
And yet this is the charge of the poor post-playing saps sent in to defend Edey They come at Edey in all sorts of ways — double teams; single teams with an assist from a guard; as a rotating army of bigs — hoping that Edey can’t possibly foul them all out. The simple goal is to prevent Edey from getting where he wants to go in the hopes that it will at least make it a little more difficult for him to score or rebound.
Imagine a traffic cone trying to stop an avalanche. This is generally how things go. Defenders shove Edey in the back (that’s a foul) or put their leg between his legs and try to drive him with their lower body leverage (it’s called rooting; it’s also a foul). They put their knee in his derriere (that’s a foul) or put two hands on his back to get resistance (that’s a foul). Occasionally they use an arm bar — that’s actually not a foul — and try to absorb the force of him.
None of it really works. Edey leads the nation in fouls drawn per 40 minutes (9.7), which is the best rate in the last six years. Nearly a third of his points (7.8 of 24.2) come at the charity stripe. He also ranks first in free throws attempted (370), going to the line at such a high clip that Edey has nearly made as many free throws (265) as Tulsa’s P.J. Haggerty, the country’s No. 2 in attempts, has tried (309).
Edey has broken a 62-year-old record for most free throws attempted in the Big Ten in a single season, and while he may not eclipse Furman’s Frank Selvy for the NCAA record of 444, he could, with a deep NCAA Tournament run, give Pistol Pete Maravich’s second-place mark a run.
“Honestly, we could probably put more fouls on the defensive guys, the poor guys who are trying to displace, and he won’t be displaced,” says John Higgins, who retired in May after working nine Final Fours. “He’s a very difficult guy to referee. I did it the first three years of his career, and I’d say we probably miss more than we call.”
The game is different down on the low block. Looks different, feels different and is, frankly, officiated differently. On the perimeter, where spacing is key, a guard might be whistled for a hand check foul because that hand check is truly influencing the play. “The closer you get to the basket, you’re playing in a phone booth,” says an active official who asked not to be named so he could speak candidly. “And when you play in a phone booth, you’re going to have contact.”
Refs do, in fact, recognize the absurdity of the situation. Most chat prior to the game to compare notes. They know who the key players are, and very often understand how the game is going to be played. Edey, for example, is going to get a lot of touches. Cynics might argue that leads to officials looking for fouls; on the contrary, they say. It means they legitimately try to discern between incidental contact and illegal, fully aware how a ticky-tack foul can change the course of the game.
On most rosters, big men aren’t as abundant as guards. Two quick tweets of the whistle can equate to an extended first-half bench visit, severely limiting a team’s ability to defend and perform. “You gotta be sane and figure out what can be called a foul and what can’t be,” Higgins says. “You have to survive a game. If it’s whoop, whoop, whoop with the whistle, and foul, foul, foul, you’re going to hear it. But the numbers aren’t shocking. I’d bet if you broke down a game film, he’s probably drawing 10 to 15 more fouls than we’re calling.”
There is, of course, a flip side to this – when Edey is the defender. To the consternation of his detractors, Edey gets fouled a lot but rarely fouls opponents. He’s averaging just 1.9 whistles per game and has not fouled out since Purdue’s Sweet 16 matchup against Saint Peter’s on March 25, 2022. He’s played 67 games since then and been whistled for four fouls just six times.
To the naked eye that reads preposterous. How can one man possibly absorb such contact and yet never dish it out on his own? Officials don’t hide that they are keenly aware of how critical Edey is to a game. “You don’t want to put gray area fouls on him,’’ says a current coordinator of officials who asked not to be identified so that he could speak candidly. “You want to make sure the fouls he commits are more or less so obvious that everyone in the arena can say the ref had no choice.”
Is that favoritism? “Fans want to watch the best players play,” Boyages says. “As long as it’s balanced with the other great players on the other side. Every team has one or two players they need to have in the game for 30 minutes, and the refs are aware of it.”
But to say the officials protect Edey would be a disservice to what Edey has done to protect himself. His coach, Matt Painter, has made a living out of coaching big bigs. Before Edey, it was Matt Haarms (7-3); before Haarms, Isaac Haas (7-2); before Haas, A.J. Hammons (7-0). He knows the rules as well as any coach in the game and has, in the officials’ eyes at least, taught Edey well.
Edey has worked on slimming down, improving his footwork and learned how to navigate his big frame. He’s smarter about working the three-second rule – the count is suspended when he dribbles or makes a move to score – and knows how to create space with his elbows without swinging them into a flagrant foul.
“He never puts himself in needless risk of fouling,” Boyages says. “He doesn’t chase a lot of loose balls, where he might, because he’s so big, accidentally smack into somebody. He’s aware of where his elbows are. When he goes to block a shot, he doesn’t swing his arms recklessly. He tries to keep them up high. He just doesn’t take needless chances.”
Yet because of Edey’s size, even officials have to make sure that what they’re seeing isn’t some sort of optical illusion. With his arms above his head, Edey hovers a good 10 ½ feet above the ground (let’s put it this way, he didn’t need a ladder to cut down the nets after the Boilers won the Big Ten regular-season title). So in some respect, as he goes for a rebound he is always over someone’s back. Fans and coaches will frequently bellow this fact during a Purdue game.
“They all scream, ‘Over the back,’” Boroski says. “And my answer is, ‘The rule is on the back.’ That’s a big distinction.” The optical illusion does, however, require a little nuancing from the refs. The lead official on the baseline might be the closest to the play, but he’s only seeing what everybody else is seeing – Edey’s arms above his opponent, reaching for the ball. “You’ve got no angle to determine if he’s on the back or just reaching for the ball,” Collins says. “The outside official might have a better view, so you really have to work together.”
As Michigan State’s Carson Cooper lifted his head off the floor, blood dripped out of his nose and onto the court. This had nothing to do with Edey. Cooper actually was unintentionally clocked by Edey’s teammate Cam Heide. But the blood droplets serve as a perfect metaphor to the reputation of the Big Ten. It is not for the faint of heart and officials tend to officiate it accordingly. They let things go, would be the parlance.
But now Purdue heads into the Everyman tournament, with officials culled from every corner of the country. Refs don’t operate entirely like they used to; they work more as subcontractors, crisscrossing through conferences regularly. But of the top 20 rated refs per KenPom, 12 have called two or fewer of Purdue games. Six – Roger Ayers, Don Daily, Bert Smith, Doug Shows, Ray Natilia and Marques Pettigrew – have not officiated the Boilers yet this season.
It shouldn’t matter. The NCAA has a process to evaluate and select the 100 referees who will work the tournament games, but human nature is what it is. Edey is different, and difficult to officiate, and how the whistles work could have a big impact on the Boilers’ pursuit of a national title.
Painter long has asked a simple thing of guys refereeing Purdue games: “Don’t hold it against him because he’s big,” he tells them regularly.
“And to me,” Boroski says, “that’s a reasonable approach.”
(Top photo: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)
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