How Dan Hurley, UConn beat Zach Edey, Purdue to win second straight national championship

NC State’s Ben Middlebrooks gave us a sneak peek of the type of defender who can at least slow Zach Edey. Middlebrooks was able to hold his ground and had some length that at least made it so Edey couldn’t easily shoot right over him. (Edey scored only one bucket with Middlebrooks on him.) Well, now Edey will have to deal with the best defender in college hoops in 7-foot-2 Donovan Clingan, the one man who can probably cover Edey one-on-one and take away the open kickout 3s Purdue is accustomed to Edey generating. The other key to Purdue’s offense is Braden Smith, and his ability to create for teammates out of the pick-and-roll. Some of Edey’s easiest buckets come off Smith’s penetration. UConn’s length in the paint makes it not just tough to make shots at the rim but also to complete passes when you get into the teeth of the defense. I just don’t see Purdue being able to score enough to keep up, and not sure anyone can slow UConn’s offense for 40 minutes. Hoping for a game decided in the final minute, but it feels like eventually UConn will pull away, because that’s what always happens.

UConn 76, Purdue 67

GLENDALE, Ariz. — In the summer of 2022, Connecticut coach Dan Hurley decided he was going to adopt a new offensive system and a new way of teaching set plays. Hurley opted to go with a football approach. He came up with a glossary of terms for different alignments and actions.

He gives a made-up example: “14 jet zoom pitch twin.”

The 14 is for the alignment — a one-four low — and then the Huskies stack actions on top of each other. In this case, a jet, then a zoom, then a pitch, then a twin.

“It’s like learning a language,” Hurley says.

The new offense, heavy on off-ball screening and movement, won the Huskies a national title in 2023. Then last summer, Hurley essentially ripped up the UConn dictionary and came up with a new glossary of terms.

“We do that because of paranoia,” says assistant coach Luke Murray, who acts as the program’s offensive coordinator.

It’s probably not necessary, because UConn’s choreographed sets leave opponents’ heads spinning already. Defending UConn is like trying to multitask inside a classroom full of screaming children.

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The national championship will head to San Antonio — and the Alamodome — in 2025. San Antonio will host for the fifth time and first since 2018.

Final Four locations for the next six years:

• 2025: San Antonio (Alamodome)
• 2026: Indianapolis (Lucas Oil Stadium)
• 2027: Detroit (Ford Field)
• 2028: Las Vegas (Allegiant Stadium)
• 2029: Indianapolis (Lucas Oil Stadium)
• 2030: Arlington, Texas (AT&T Stadium)

Purdue’s Zach Edey and Connecticut’s Donovan Clingan are two of the most dominant players in recent college annals.

You can see this any number of ways, including, uh, watching the games, but an easy shorthand to see their dominance is the fact that they are first and second in college basketball in PER by miles and miles, with Edey’s unfathomable 39.7 topping the NCAA and Clingan’s 35.7 mark, ranking second. Those are the two highest marks by any NCAA player since Williamson’s 40.8 in 2018-19 at Duke … with the exception of Edey’s 40.2 in 2022-23.

The other standout stat for these two gentlemen is their sheer size. They aren’t just tall; they’re big, with solid frames and thick calves. Edey is 7-4 and 300 pounds; Clingan is 7-2, 280.

And that takes us to the crux of the issue, because we’ve seen this movie before with other dinosaur bigs like Connecticut’s Adama Sanogo and Iowa’s Luka Garza, who were able to dominate college basketball while rarely leaving the paint on defense. That’s not a thing at the NBA level, where the game forces them to cover the perimeter. (Somewhat off topic: Giant bigs are also able to remain in the paint in international rules, which is why Edey is an underutilized weapon for Team Canada and why Clingan’s Italian ancestry is a topic of interest overseas.)

The one thing you can see in the tape for Edey and Clingan is that, if you are going to allow them to just hang out in the paint on defense, you might as well not bother showing up at all. It’s just too easy for them.

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Zach Edey made peace with the gawking years ago, before he’d even started to play basketball.

“I was 6-10 in eighth grade, so probably then, when I really started getting the stares,” Edey said. “I got banned from trick-or-treating when I was in fourth grade. People got mad at me because I was too big. Well, not banned, but I would get the stink eyes. I was like 6 foot going door to door. People would be like, ‘What are you doing? You’re too old for this.’”

If you want to get Purdue coach Matt Painter angry, suggest that Edey is just tall. You don’t win consensus national player of the year two straight seasons on size alone.

“Zach Edey is very smart, very skilled, and I don’t think people give him the credit for the basketball player he is,” said Alabama assistant Ryan Pannone, whose team lost 92-86 to the Boilermakers in December and would like another crack at Edey in Monday night’s championship game. “People just see a tall person, but he’s so much more than that.”

He’s also freakishly strong. Purdue strength coach Jason Kabo said Edey, after considerable work these last two years in the weight room, has deadlifted 550 pounds — in a modified lift that accounts for how far such a giant has to bend down. Speaking of, Kabo and Edey have worked extensively on improving his speed and mobility, and even how to hit the brakes on an 18-wheeler like him, because the laws of physics dictate that a massive object in motion is hard to stop. Hard to officiate, too. Painter understands why opposing coaches, players and fan bases get so worked up about Edey, who leads the nation in points, rebounds, field goals, free throws and free-throw attempts.

“His physical presence causes a lot of problems,” Painter said. “That’s why you see a lot of pushback with it, because there’s very few people that have that type of physical presence. I think that’s the ultimate compliment. There was a good guard at Indiana named Yogi Ferrell, and I always used to complain he was carrying the basketball. At the end of the day, I just deep down didn’t think we could guard him. That’s all it was. I always complained about him. I just finally caught myself one day and said, ‘I need to shut up. I’m losing a lot of respect with these officials because he’s not doing anything differently than anybody else, except that he’s just better than everybody else.’ I think Zach gets a lot of that.”

STORRS, Conn. — When Cam Spencer visited Connecticut last spring, he got the usual treatment. Photoshoot. Pitches on branding and NIL. The fluff, UConn coach Dan Hurley calls it.

Spencer goes out of his way to avoid what others seek. He’s not on social media. His interests are minimal. And Hurley could see Spencer and his family losing interest.

Then they started talking hoops. Style of play. How Spencer fit in UConn’s system.

“The group perked up,” Hurley says.

Hurley tells the story like a man who found his soulmate. Spencer is as close to his clone as anyone he’s ever coached. Spencer is the old man yelling to get off his lawn, and Hurley is across the street on his porch echoing obscenities. Hurley compares their anger meter to the strongman carnival game. “You hit it, and it goes all the way up,” he says. “It is in a way looking in the mirror.”

They’re unapologetically confident, and equally as obsessive. And once Hurley learned more about Spencer, it became clear that their upbringings were similar. “The accountability, the responsibility, the work ethic, the total desperation to be successful to win, to compete,” Hurley says. “The family, it emanates from them.”

Both Spencer and Hurley were the younger brother chasing their very successful older brother. We all know about Bobby Hurley, two-time national champion at Duke and Final Four MOP. Patrick Spencer, four years older than Cam, was the best college lacrosse player in the country at Loyola Maryland — he won the Tewaaraton Award, lacrosse’s version of the Heisman Trophy — and then went to play basketball for a year at Northwestern. Now he’s in the NBA, recently signing a two-way contract with the Golden State Warriors. “He was always kicking my a–,” Cam says.

Cam had one scholarship offer out of high school, to Loyola. His long-shot past doesn’t necessarily drive him, but he wears it like a badge of honor. No one fights for success like he does. Earlier this season, he told an opposing player, “You don’t want this as much as me.”

In Hurley, Spencer found someone who craves to demoralize his opponent while chasing perfection. “Just the intensity level,” Spencer says. “Every little thing matters, because it does.”

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David Barrett finds inspiration in everything around him. Something might come to mind while the singer-songwriter sits at home. Maybe while he’s at a wedding or celebrating a special occasion.

Or maybe when he’s talking to a waitress in a near-empty tavern.

In 1986, Barrett was at the Varsity Inn in East Lansing, Mich., having a beer and watching Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics on television. As he sat, he chatted with Jan Shoemaker, a waitress he found attractive. Because he was somewhat nervous, the conversation turned to basketball and the beauty he found in the sport. Barrett once was a self-professed “ball hog” who was recruited to play at Albion College before he found success in soccer.

He didn’t get Shoemaker’s phone number, but that conversation still led to something special. That night, Barrett took time out to scribble words on a napkin. Those words became the title of a song he wrote.

The song: “One Shining Moment.”

“I call it my little miracle because it’s miraculous the way it fell,” Barrett said.

The ball is tipped. And there you are. You’re running for your life. You’re a shooting star.

For Barrett, basketball isn’t just a game, it’s something to behold. That night, he watched Bird shine. At the same time, he tried explaining “the poetry of basketball” to Shoemaker.

Instead, Shoemaker left.

“When she got up to leave,” Barrett said, “I leaned to my right, got a napkin and wrote down the title for the song — because I thought that’s exactly where Mr. Bird is right now. I played a lot of basketball growing up, so every once in a while, you know what it is when you get in the zone. So I thought there’s a song, and that’s how it got started.”

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Why a 13-point margin? Because that’s the closest any team has come to the Huskies in their last 11 NCAA Tournament games. The word a lot of us keep using for Dan Hurley’s juggernaut is “inevitable,” and that’s really it. No matter how well you play for a half, or two-thirds of a game, the Huskies’ hammer is eventually going to drop on your skull. Clingan neutralizes Edey, and then UConn is just better at every other position. Put away the champagne, 2007 Florida. You’ve got company.

UConn 77, Purdue 64

NCAA president Charlie Baker last month asked for a ban on prop bets involving college athletes, saying the national body wanted to protect both athletes and the integrity of the game.

But prop (or proposition) bets — which typically are on an individual’s performance, such as how many 3s one player makes — are really only the tip of the iceberg.

As more and more states legalize sports betting (38 plus the District of Columbia), the walls that long separated college athletics from gambling continue to tumble down. The NCAA now hosts events in Las Vegas (the 2028 Final Four will be held there) and just last week housed two teams in casinos in Detroit. Athletes and departmental staff members still cannot bet on any sport in which the NCAA sponsors a championship, but plenty of people are betting on them.

It’s upped the scrutiny on teams — Temple last month was investigated for betting irregularities involving its team — and the vitriol directed at players. That vitriol, of course, can be directly delivered thanks to social media. The NCAA has tried to hit that head-on, partnering with a group called Signify, to monitor and, when necessary, even shut down, online threats.

But conversations with basketball players, from starters to scrubs, throughout this NCAA Tournament reveal that plenty are getting through. “Oh, yeah, it happens all the time,’’ Purdue center Zach Edey said. “Like after every game, probably.’’

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As of this writing, the line I’m seeing between KenPom’s No. 1 and No. 2 teams is minus-6.5, in favor of the reigning national champs. So, a three-possession game … despite Purdue having the No. 3 offense in the country, led by a generational talent and two-time Wooden Award winner. That kind of sums up just how much of a woodchipper UConn has become. Edey may have 30 and 20, but what UConn’s guards will do to Purdue’s, I’m afraid, will border on NSFW. Give me the Huskies, college basketball’s budding dynasty, and consider it a sign of respect for the Boilermakers that this is even a single-digit game — especially considering Connecticut’s first five NCAA Tournament wins have been by an average of 25 points.

UConn 82, Purdue 73

Five players — four from UConn and one from Purdue — appear in The Athletic's Sam Vecenie's most recent mock draft.

The top draft prospect in Monday's national championship game is UConn guard Stephon Castle, who Vecenie projected to go sixth to the Charlotte Hornets.

Huskies center Donovan Clingan and Purdue center Zach Edey are also first-round prospects.

• Castle: No. 6
• Clingan: No. 11
• Edey: No. 21
• UConn wing Alex Karaban: No. 39
• UConn guard Cam Spencer: No. 52

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I picked the Huskies to repeat at the outset of the NCAA Tournament. I would be willing to switch it up if I had evidence to suggest I should … but I don’t. In fact, the backcourt play — particularly on the defensive end — makes me wonder if this will be close. We’ve all seen Final Four games tilted by an early foul call or two on big men. We know that’s probably fatal for Purdue and certainly problematic for UConn, should it happen Monday. But Tristen Newton and Stephon Castle have locked down better guards and wings than Purdue can offer. UConn has size and depth and multiple paths to victory. The Boilermakers need to play damn near perfect. That’s a tough ask.

UConn 76, Purdue 66

Love the matchup. Love the battle of big men. Love the Purdue redemption tour. But UConn is too strong. Tristen Newton controls the game. Donovan Clingan matches Zach Edey. And the Huskies pull away in the second half, winning every game by double digits for the second year in a row.

UConn 75, Purdue 64

When Connecticut and Purdue tip off the national championship later today, it will be broadcast on TBS — not CBS, the traditional home of the men's NCAA Tournament.

That's because of the latest television contract for the tournament. That deal, which runs through 2032, calls for CBS and TBS to alternate as the network of the Final Four. TBS has the even years — so, 2024, 2026, 2028, 2030 and 2032 moving forward — and CBS has the odds.