Zach Edey, Jaden Ivey changed Purdue perceptions en route to NBA draft's top 10

• The Memphis Grizzlies selected former Purdue C Zach Edey 9th in the 2024 NBA Draft.
• Edey and Jaden Ivey became the third members of the same Big Ten signing class drafted in the top 10.

INDIANAPOLIS — Turns out, Purdue basketball needed only the 37th-ranked signing class in the nation to spark a generational breakthrough. 

The Memphis Grizzlies took the lowest-ranked member of that 2020 signing trio — center Zach Edey — with the ninth overall selection in Wednesday’s NBA Draft first round. Hard to remember the days when Ethan Morton cast even a figurative shadow over the 7-4 Canadian. 

The headliner in that signing class, Jaden Ivey, beat Edey to the NBA draft lottery by two years. Wednesday night, though, they reunited in spirit. They will endure as the faces of this sliver of Boilermakers history — and of the growing momentum the program retains after their departures. 

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In the first 75 years of the NBA draft, Purdue produced seven top-10 picks. That included two who went No. 1 overall — Glenn Robinson in 1994 and Joe Barry Carroll in 1979. Yet that success tended to be spread out. The lone exception came when Keith Edmonson and Russell Cross went in the top 10 in 1982-83. 

When the Detroit Pistons selected Ivey fifth in 2022, they made him the first Boilermakers lottery pick since Robinson. When the Grizzlies took Edey, they turned the former classmates into a notable combo. 

Leave it to a number cruncher like Jeremy Frank, a data scientist for Matt Painter’s beloved Chicago Cubs, to demonstrate exactly how rare. As he posted on X.com after Edey’s selection, only three freshman classes in Big Ten history have produced two top-10 picks: 

• 1991-92 Michigan’s Chris Webber (1993) and Juwan Howard (1994). That’s 40% of the Fab Five, responsible for back-to-back national championship game appearances. 
• 2006-07 Ohio State’s Greg Oden and Mike Conley in 2007. The former Lawrence North teammates reached the national championship game in their lone college season. 
• 2020-21 Purdue’s Ivey and Edey. Though their careers diverged after two seasons, they belong together as catalysts of a new momentum. 

Prior to their arrival, Purdue’s national status came with plenty of qualifiers still attached. Best program without a Final Four appearance since the Jimmy Carter administration. Best program without a lottery pick this century. What previously may have been the best program never ranked No. 1 in the AP Top 25 poll reached that spot in each of the past three seasons. 

Ivey and Edey pried away almost all of those stubborn qualifiers. That elusive national championship remains the final “but/except” barrier to college basketball’s most exclusive tier. 

Painter said recently he wants to keep signing the kind of players he’s already getting. Yet it can’t hurt that championship chase to regularly broadcast an advertisement for the program in the first hour of draft night. 

Ivey came to college with NBA expectations. He displayed his maturing game at Purdue’s Elite Camp in August 2018, the day he picked up his first scholarship offer. (Also offered that day: A 7-footer from up north named ... Chet Holmgren. He ultimately chose Gonzaga, but things worked out well for Purdue with this other 7-footer.) 

Edey, though, had to be built into the force which dominated the Big Ten as few others have for consecutive seasons. Together, he and Ivey confirmed Purdue’s ability to both attract elite talent per consensus opinion and recognize it where others did not. 

Ivey and Edey did not shift a standard. They did, though, shift the national perspective of, and appreciation for, a program previously identified by the heights it had not reached. 

Their talents now belong in the NBA, but the momentum left behind can continue. 

Follow IndyStar Purdue Insider Nathan Baird on X at @nwbaird.