4 NCAA Tournament prospects Nuggets fans can watch as potential Nikola Jokic backup

Zach Edey, Purdue

By now, most casual college basketball fans know about the 7’4” goliath and back-to-back Big 10 Player of the Year. Edey won National Player of the Year last season and has a chance to do so again this season.

He’s an absolutely dominant post player at the college level, screening, posting up, and working people on the glass. He has good touch and ball skills for a player of his size, and he has enough meat on his frame to hold his own against stronger players.

Edey can protect the rim with the best of them and you won’t find a lot of players who can back him down. He doesn’t have a lot of athleticism and isn’t going to fly up and down the floor or sky above the rim. 

He also isn’t comfortable away from the rim, especially on defense where he will surely be targeted in the pick-and-roll relentlessly by NBA offenses. But Edey has done a great job of improving his weaknesses every season and has become a very good player with a lot of skills that should easily translate to the league. After all, you can’t teach height.

Edey and his Boilermakers, of course, lost as a number-one seed last season and are trying to avenge that embarrassing loss this year. They’ve earned another 1 seed, this time in the Midwest Region. They share a bracket with the likes of 4-seed Kansas, 3-seed Creighton, and 2-seed Tennessee.