Joe Barry Carroll can relate to Zach Edey’s latest achievement as the big man on Purdue University’s campus.
Before Sunday, no Purdue men’s basketball team made the NCAA Final Four since Carroll was the featured post player 44 years ago. Purdue went from a runner-up finish in the 1979 National Invitation Tournament to the biggest stage in college hoops the next season, winning the now-defunct third-place game over Big Ten rival Iowa.
Carroll, who was born in Pine Bluff and raised here until moving to Denver as a teen, became the top overall pick in the 1980 NBA draft and played 10 of the next 11 seasons in the league, averaging 17.7 points for his career. (He spent the 1984-85 season in Italy.)
The 7-footer still ranked second all-time in scoring (2,175 points) at Purdue to Rick Mount, a member of the Boilermakers’ 1969 national runner-up team, and was the leading career rebounder (1,148) at Purdue until Edey topped both charts this season.
“The postseason tournament is really peculiar,” Carroll said, referring not just to any one tournament. “Whatever the postseason play is, there’s a level of energy, a certain desperation of now — you’ve got to have it now; there is no tomorrow. I think that fuels a lot of excitement for the fans and the players. I think that’s why those guys are playing so aggressively. There is no tomorrow.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Carroll, now 65, couldn’t recall whether he and his teammates made a conscious decision to write a comeback script after losing to Indiana in the NIT final. (Purdue beat Indiana in the 1980 Sweet 16 after finishing third to the Hoosiers in the Big Ten.)
“But we were able to make it to the [NCAA] tournament, and something happened as we moved through those games,” Carroll said. “We just got better and better, and by the time the Final Four rolled around, they considered us a surprise party because none of the teams that were favored made it that year.”
Purdue, seeded No. 6 in the Mideast, lost its semifinal game to West No. 8 UCLA 67-62, before winning third place 75-58 to East No. 5 Iowa. Midwest No. 2 Louisville beat Iowa 80-72 in the other semifinal and UCLA 59-54 in the title game. Purdue finished 23-10 in Lee Rose’s second and final season as head coach before former Arkansas assistant Gene Keady took over.
The 7-foot-4 Canadian-born Edey, the two-time reigning Big Ten Player of the Year, will likely be drafted first in this year’s draft. He helped the Boilers win their second straight Big Ten regular-season championship and break their 44-year Final Four drought with a 72-66 win over Tennessee with 40 points and 16 rebounds.
“I think they’ve done something to be proud of,” Carroll said. “I’m really proud of them and Coach [Matt] Painter. You can only imagine his emotional high in having finally gotten over that hump. It’s a great time, and I’m happy for them.”
This season’s Boilermakers, 33-4 and the Midwest No. 1 seed, are writing their own comeback story after losing in the first round in 2023 as a No. 1 seed to Fairleigh Dickinson.
Purdue will take on North Carolina State at 5:09 p.m. Saturday in the first national semifinal in Phoenix. Alabama and defending champion Connecticut will play in the other semifinal shortly afterward, with the championship set for Monday night.
Few may have expected West No. 4 Alabama and South No. 11 N.C. State to make it to Phoenix.
Alabama had to stun No. 1 North Carolina and beat a Clemson team it lost to at home earlier this season to win the West Region. N.C. State, trying to replicate its “survive and advance” championship run of 1983, is in the Final Four for the first time since then, after winning five games in five days to win the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament and four more games over two weeks in the NCAA tournament.
“I’ve also heard sports and the postseason play, in particular, be called the great human drama because we love a story that makes us crazy like that,” Carroll said. “We’re all on the edge. It’s not over until it’s over.”
At 25 points and 12.2 rebounds per game this season, Edey is dominating the college game well into the 3-point era, which began for the NCAA in the 1986-87 season. Teams tend to spread out their offenses around the perimeter before working the ball to the post player, while Carroll was the main focus of Purdue’s offense before the 3-point line. Carroll averaged 22.3 points and 9.2 rebounds as a senior in 1979-80.
“Zach’s a star, for sure,” Carroll said. “I was more of a finesse player. He goes right at it. He’s very aggressive, effective. Those numbers he’s putting up cannot be denied. I think the thing with sports, certainly, we all enjoy being in the barbershop chatting it up about our favorite teams and what have you, but that’s just for fun. At the end of the day, he is a star without even trying to put it into context. He’s just a really good player.”
Many of the key players Carroll teamed with could have been the Boilers’ top star in his four seasons there, he pointed out. But it was just Carroll’s luck, he said, that Rose made him the focal point of the team.
Not only did teams have to figure out how to contain Carroll’s finesse on the low blocks. He was also the center of attention when he stopped the final moments of his last home game at Mackey Arena to hug his mother, Annie Mae Briggs Carroll, before he went to the bench.
Edey’s mother Julia has drawn plenty of her own camera time throughout the season, cheering on her son from just a few rows behind the bench.
“No matter how big and grown any of us becomes, we all remain loyal to our family in some way,” Joe Barry Carroll said. “Families are complicated, but we all feel some level of requirement to celebrate our families. Especially since, like I’m sure he and his mother have a lot of backstory, where they come from, where they want to go, none of the success he’s having would mean very much to him, or I would doubt any of the success he’s having would mean much to him, if she were not in those stands. It means everything.”
How Purdue’s 2024 Final Four story unfolds is anyone’s guess. Carroll plans to find out from the comfort of his home in Atlanta, where he’s an artist, author and financial advisor for today’s professional athletes.
“We’ll all discover it at the same time,” he said. “Anything else is just speculation. It’s a fun time to watch basketball, and we’re going to be entertained.”
