Zach Edey mostly denied by Iowa, so his Purdue pals came up big

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The standings aren’t fibbing. They rarely do.

Purdue improved to 12-2 in Big Ten men’s basketball Thursday night, three games ahead of the field and four (in the loss column) up on the Iowa team it beat 87-73 Thursday at Mackey Arena.

Matt Painter has another terrific nine-man player rotation, and two-thirds of it calls Indiana home. But the difference between his club and all the other likely 2023 NCAA tournament participants from this conference is a Canadian.

Toronto’s Zach Edey is to the Big Ten what Toronto’s CN Tower is to the Western Hemisphere. Namely, its tallest tower. Edey leads the league in scoring, rebounding and intimidation.

Edey didn’t score Thursday until he made it 17-4 in favor of his team off a rebound, but did as much as anyone to build that lead with his rebounding, passing and shot-blocking.

Iowa’s defensive strategy was to double-team the 7-foot-4, 290-pound Edey, and it was hard to argue with that. The trouble was, Purdue’s guards took advantage of the open shots they got in a virtual 4-on-3 situation, and Edey was quick to spot and hit them in the right places.

Hawkeyes center Filip Rebraca did an admirable job in 36 minutes of hard work, but Rebraca spotted Edey 7 inches and 60 pounds.

“Unfortunately,” Rebraca said after the game, “I’m not 7-foot-plus, 260-plus pounds where I can help my teammates more, where they don’t have to double up.”

Rebraca had 17 points and wasn’t the victim of any of Edey’s five blocked shots. But there was only so much he could do against the National Player of the Year-to-be, who had 14 rebounds and four assists to go with his 14 points on just seven field goal attempts.

Iowa played a very nice second half, scoring 52 points and cutting a 21-point Purdue lead to 70-64 with 5:39 left. But Edey scored the next four points, and four more after that, and the Boilermakers had their sixth Big Ten win by at least 13 points.

It’s a very good conference, one in which Iowa has played well in winning seven of its last 10 games to sit at 7-6 and in good shape to make the NCAAs. Yet, it’s as close to 13th place in the league standings as it is to Purdue.

Guards Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer teamed to score Purdue’s first 13 points. Smith had a career-high 24. They’re freshmen. One was Indiana’s Mr. Basketball last year, the other was Indiana’s Gatorade Boys’ Basketball Player of the Year.

Iowa chose not to let Edey score 38 points, which he did against Michigan State on Jan. 29. Smith, Loyer and their teammates took advantage.

“When teams want to play like that against me, want to try to limit my post touches,” Edey said, “we’ve got a bunch of guys who can step up. We’ve got a really deep team. We’ve got a lot of guys that can hurt you.”

If Smith and Loyer had played like typical freshmen in the first half, they would have missed a few more shots, gone to the wrong spots on the floor, let Iowa hang around in the first half before getting its act together in the second instead of running up a 38-21 halftime lead.

“He’s terrific,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said about Smith, “but everybody else is. It’s not just him. Everybody on the team is really good. Everybody they bring in (off the bench) is really good. That’s why they’re ranked No. 1”

Maybe the Hawkeyes will get another crack at the Boilers, on a Chicago neutral court in the Big Ten tourney. Maybe those Purdue freshmen will wilt just a bit away from this Mackey hothouse.

Maybe a game of experience against Purdue would make a second meeting competitive for 40 minutes. Iowa’s third game against the Boilermakers last year was the charm, in the Big Ten championship.

In the meantime, the Hawkeyes have last-place Minnesota next, Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis. The short-handed, beleaguered Gophers can serve as a reminder to Iowa’s players that things could be so much worse than losing to the nation’s No. 1 team on the road.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com