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.Continue reading.