Zach Edey concluded his career on Monday, completing one of the most remarkable statistical seasons in recent decades. One that’s unlikely to be challenged anytime soon barring a major change to the way the game is played. Edey’s season has been oddly downplayed by critics who either charge he’s the beneficiary of a massive officiating conspiracy or his work should be dismissed because he’s 7-foot-4 (as if the scoreboard cares about a player’s height).
But now that it’s over, let’s lay out some facts.
1. Edey had the most productive offensive season in the modern era of men’s college basketball.
Edey finished the season with a 128.8 offensive rating on 33.4% usage. I’ve been collecting player-level data since the 2002 season. Over that time there have been 99 player-seasons with an offensive rating of at least 125 on at least 30% usage. But most of these seasons are like UC Santa Barbara’s Konner Baroni who played one minute against D-I competition this season and scored four points. That resulted in an offensive rating of 205.5 on a physically impossible 124.7% usage. (I should probably update my code to cap usage at 100%.)
If we limit our sample to players who played at least 60% of their team’s minutes, then just four player-seasons meet the criteria. Two of those were Edey’s last two seasons. Saint Mary’s Jock Landale did it in 2018, sneaking over the threshold with a usage rate of 30.05%. Marquette’s Travis Diener did it in 2005, but also with slightly lower usage at 30.5%, and he missed the last eight games of the season due to injury.
While the raw numbers of those seasons are in the ballpark of Edey’s 2024 effort, there’s really no comparing them. Edey did his work against one of the most difficult schedules played by any team in the last 25 years. A slate that included 15 games against top 25 competition and just four outside of the top 200. Saint Mary’s schedule in 2018 was ranked 196th nationally. Landale played just two games against top 25 competition while playing 13 against teams outside of the top 200. Marquette’s schedule in 2005 was ranked 109th and included 5 games against top 25 teams, but Diener didn’t play in two of those due to injury.
Furthermore, Edey racked up 30 game MVP’s (using Hollinger game score with a small bonus for winning the game). This is the 13th year I’ve been tabulating game MVP’s and the previous season high was Jameel Warney’s 23 in 2016.
2. Edey shot the second-most free throws in a single season
This is particularly impressive given the era he’s playing in. Per the NCAA Record Book, here are the all-time leaders in single-season free throw attempts:
You’ll notice a common theme. There’s Pete Maravich, and then everyone else is from the 1950’s. The 1950’s were a special time for fans of free throws. Per the record book, free throw attempts per team-game peaked in 1953 at 32.5, mainly due to rules that required free throw attempts on every foul. (Maravich’s season was truly bonkers since it happened in a more normal era of free throw opportunities, though it occurred when SEC basketball was in the very early stages of integration.)
Edey did have the advantage of playing in 39 games, but considering schedule strength and that this season had just 19.0 free throws per team-game, getting to the line 436 times may be the most prolific free-throw performance in history when accounting for the context of the season.
This allowed him to blow away the modern record for points scored while shooting 5 or fewer 3-pointers. Per our friends at sports-reference.com he scored 36% more points than the next-closest non-Edey season since 2005:
3. Edey had the second-most productive championship game in history.
Though it came in a loss, Edey closed things out in style. His 37 points on Monday were the fourth-most in a title game. We’ll set aside Bill Walton’s 44-point performance in 1973 as the best of all time (primarily because Walton went 21-of-22 from the field).
The other two scoring totals better than Edey were Gail Goodrich’s 42 points in 1965 and Jack Givens’ 41 in 1978. There is an important distinction between Monday’s game and the games of long ago. The Purdue-UConn game had a total of 61 possessions. Based on the boxscores, the title game in 1965 had somewhere north of 70 possessions and the 1978 title game had 80 or more. The chance of a high-scoring game have decreased since the old days when the pace of games tended to be higher.
As with his entire season, there was a fair amount of downplaying of this performance for various reasons. Ultimately, Edey scored 37 points on 30 effective field goal attempts against what was widely considered the best defensive center in the country. This was the second-most points scored all season in a game with 61 possessions or fewer.
Whatever excuses you want to make, Edey had a season you’re unlikely to see again anytime soon against a schedule that was historically difficult. And he punctuated it with a title game performance that hasn’t been seen in decades against one of the strongest teams in recent times. Love him or hate him, Edey was special. And if you hate him, you’re probably a jealous loser.