Big men are rolling for Purdue, NC State and UConn. Now they’ve got their teams in the Final Four
GLENDALE, Ariz. — DJ Burns Jr. isn’t interested in spending a lot of time catching the ball on the perimeter and trying to show off a shimmying crossover dribble before chucking 3-pointers for North Carolina State.
No, he’s content to catch an entry pass, use his size to back down an opponent, then turn to make a winning read to shoot or pass.
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It isn’t much different for Purdue’s 7-foot-4 reigning national player of the year Zach Edey. Or for Connecticut’s 7-2 Donovan Clingan with game-changing defensive potential.
They’re all here playing for a national championship, turning the Final Four into their own personal showcase for the value of the big man: the burly, long-armed, feet-in-the-paint anchors offering a throwback feel in a time of “position-less” basketball. And these guys aren’t ready to surrender the spotlight to all those 3-point shooters and high-flying wings just yet.
“I think it’ll be fun, two guys who like to play with their back to the basket,” Burns said Thursday, two days before matching up with Edey as N.C. State meets Purdue in a national semifinal. “Similar games in the sense of not trying to do too much and shoot 3s and do all that other stuff that bigs try to do nowadays — taking themselves away from what they’re good at.”
Evolving offenses have valued creating more space and utilizing players’ skillets to add new wrinkles to tried-and-true schemes. Yet there is something to be said for the ruthlessly efficient approach of posting up a talented big — a core feature of college offenses through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s with prominent names like UCLA’s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lew Alcindor) and Bill Walton, Houston’s Hakeem Olajuwon and Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing.
The 6-9 Burns is listed at a seemingly conservative 275 pounds, and he has bumped, jostled and battered defenders out of position before using a soft touch to score around or over them. That powered the 11th-seeded Wolfpack’s run through the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament and on to the program’s first Final Four appearance since the “Cardiac Pack” magic of the 1983 title run under late Hall of Famer Jim Valvano.
Just as effective was Edey’s 40-point performance in a regional final against Tennessee, which included getting to the foul line 22 times to get Purdue to its first Final Four since 1980. And Clingan dominated Illinois with 22 points and five blocked shots.
