Gonzaga basketball head coach Mark Few has a tough nut to crack. Advancing to the Sweet 16, the fifth-seeded Bulldogs will be taking on Zach Edey and the number-one Purdue basketball this coming Friday. Purdue's 7-foot-4 center has been dominating in the March Madness tournament lately, and Few himself had words of praise for the big man.
“In 25 years I have been a head coach here, I have never dealt with a player or an entity like him,” Few said, per Fox Sports. “He is a really, really, really good basketball player. And he does everything well, I mean he posts the right way, can score…And then at the other end, he's just…we're a team that likes to shoot and are very effective in the paint, and like to shoot twos…it's tough to get shots off in the paint.”
Zach Edey's dominant campaign
Looking at Zach Edey's game, one is reminded of old-school big men who earned their points down the block. Low post seals, a hook shot with a soft touch and cuts to the basket off of pick & rolls, Edey had been making his presence felt in the tournament with a skill set that relies on fundamentals and the use of his 300-pound frame.
It's worked well for the center though. Purdue faced off against Grambling basketball to open their March Madness campaign and Edey immediately made an impact. The 21-year-old senior stamped his mark with a monster double-double of 30 points and 21 rebounds in a game where the Boilermakers won by 28 points. Edey then followed that up with a 23-point, 14-rebound outing in Purdue's 39-point blowout of Utah State.
Even before the Big Dance, teams already had trouble finding a solution to the towering big man. Edey leads all NCAA Division I players this year in scoring with 24.5 points per game while also averaging 12.1 boards a game.
Mark Few and Gonzaga basketball won't back down
Nevertheless, Mark Few and Gonzaga already know what it's like to face Purdue. The Bulldogs fell to the Boilermakers by 10 points (73-63) during their last clash back in November. With Eddey manning the middle, Gonzaga turned to their three-point shooting, but they only hit 6-of-32 (18.8%) during that game.
It was just an off-night, however. Looking at the stats, Gonzaga shoots 35.4% from three-point range as a team. Anton Watson and Nolan Hickman, the team's second and third-leading scorers (respectively) both shoot no less than 40% from deep. If the team manages to find their rhythm from outside, then it could be a different story this time around.
Additionally, Graham Ike (the Bulldogs' leading scorer) tallied 14 points and seven rebounds in that last game against Edey, so his aggressive play will definitely be a factor for Gonzaga.
The Bulldogs are one of the more well-known programs in college, but one thing missing from their accolades is a National Championship. They've made the Elite Eight six times and the Finals twice, but that's the furthest they've reached. All the heartbreaks have surely made Mark Few and the team hungrier than ever.
Can the Zags beat the odds and silence the critics once and for all? Who knows. For that to happen, they can start by getting past Zach Edey and Purdue on Friday.
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