GLENDALE, Ariz. – Highlights from Purdue coach Matt Painter’s news conference Friday at State Farm Stadium ahead of Saturday’s national semifinal game against North Carolina State:

On team and Matt Painter attending Zach Edey’s AP Player of the Year award news conference on Friday:

“I think obviously he’s our pillar, the guy we work around in what we do. But it’s not something from an attention-seeking that I think he likes. He’s gotten more comfortable answering questions and getting that kind of attention. At the end of the day, he just wants it to be a team game. He wants the attention to go to everybody.

He does a great job of facilitating that, being humble. That’s refreshing. Who doesn’t want to play with a great player but also a great player that’s unselfish and humble like he is.

He’s learned to take some things in stride and understand it's his value but it's also the value of our team.”

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When you have two big men going against each other, how do you navigate that fine line between being aggressive and not getting into foul trouble?

“That’s a really good question ’cause that’s a big piece of the game for size because they deal with fouls a little bit differently, especially somebody like DJ Burns who seeks out that contact, and rightfully so. He does a great job of getting that feel for that contact, then he knows which way to go or which way to maneuver.

Both of those guys are great because they can score over either shoulder, hurt you in a lot of different ways, but they're both really unselfish.

If you want to take away their scoring ability, they're great passers and they can get the ball out of their hands.

I think that's a little different matchup with Kyle Filipowski, who is a fabulous player. I look at him as really like a four man. You can even kind of say he's that hybrid four, that 3-4 type guy. You see guys like him play at five a lot because coaches are trying to get their best players on the floor. If they think their guards are better, they stretch it out and put him at the five and do different things.

With Zach, obviously he is a five. He's closer to a six than he is a four. So I think that matchup is going to be a great matchup. More than anything, it’s trying to be physical without fouling. It’s something we talk about a lot. Sometimes we’re good at it, sometimes we're not.

I think everybody kind of struggles with that. But at the end of the day it’s making people earn their points and stay in the game. That's something that he wants to do, DJ Burns wants to do, and Zach. Also that other team is trying to attack you. You kind of got to manage that as a coach, especially if you get that one foul. Obviously if you get that second foul in the first half.”

The names that were rattled off for winning this award, separate the NBA part here, just college basketball, when you hear Ralph Sampson, Jerry Lucas, Kareem, Bill Walton, Pete Maravich, I’m including Robertson here, it’s an unbelievable list. A Hall-of-Fame list. Where do you put Zach Edey in the college basketball historical perspective after what he has just accomplished the last two years?

“I think just that consistency of being able to be a national Player of the Year for two years in back-to-back year is very impressive. With that being said, like if you go back to Jerry Lucas, his Ohio State games, Lew Alcindor at UCLA, Ralph Sampson at Virginia, you’re talking about a lot of success. Those guys just didn't have gaudy numbers, their teams won a lot of games.

When you look at Zach, he's in that same boat when it comes to individual success and team success. It’s a little surreal, too. Like, when we’ve talked about it, when he’ll pass certain guys, the scoring in the Big Ten or the rebounding in the Big Ten, he’s going by Cazzie Russell, Walt Bellamy. And you know he doesn’t know who the hell Cazzie Russell and Walt Bellamy are, and these guys are just legends and great players, but it’s 40 years ago, 50 years ago. So much time has went by.

Jerry Lucas could arguably be the best Big Ten player ever from a career standpoint. If you look at how many rebounds he averaged, how many points he averaged. They were in Final Fours. I think they won a national championship if I’m not mistaken. It was 10 years before I was born.

He had unbelievable numbers across the board. So when you see some of those comparisons, go look at David Robinson's numbers, Shaquille O’Neal’s numbers. He’s right there with both of those guys. He didn't have as many blocks as those guys did, but the rebounds and points are eerie in terms of how similar they are.”

What does that say about Zach, that he had to go on this learning curve to get to this elite status?

“Yeah, that group of guys, he’s the outlier, there's no question about that, because from Lew Alcindor to Jerry Lucas, Elvin Hayes has been in a lot of these discussions, Ralph Sampson, all of those guys coming out of high school were the best player in the country, then they ended up being the best player in college, then great NBA careers.

It says a lot about him, about his development. Obviously he has elite size. He’s really improved his lateral movement, his mobility overall. Rebounds out of his area. Can change the ends, play ball screen defense, which is so important. He’s a great passer now. A couple of those areas that I said positive things about, he just wasn't there four years ago. So now that improvement and that development, you really got to give credit to him, give credit to his teammates.

Brandon Brantley, one of our assistants, has put in a lot of time with him, watching video, working on things, just being fundamentally sound. Kudos to him. He doesn’t have a wall. You're the best player in the country when you're 14, you recruit them when they’re 18 or 19, like you feel pretty good about yourself, right? He just doesn't have that element to him. He just takes things in. We communicate and kind of collaborate, then we just kind of go from there.

It’s pretty refreshing.”

The college athlete experience is probably a little bit different now than when you played with questions about employment, revenue sharing, NIL. The term ‘student-athlete’, does that feel outdated to you?

“I wouldn’t say it’s outdated. I just think they have to have a clear definition of what name, image and likeness is. On some fronts that's occurring, other fronts it's an auction in the spring. Make sense?

We have to get some parameters around what we’re actually doing and what’s actually going on and not try to just do something so we can stay out of the courts. That’s all things are happening because for a long time, what's the product. The product is the player. They’re viewed as amateurs, but they weren’t amateurs. There's a lot of money generated through what they’re doing.

Name, image and likeness needed to happen. We just got to get some guardrails around it to be able to get there.

Now when you look at the student-athlete, the thing that I always tell those guys is you’re going to be a former player for 50 years, don’t be a fool. Understand that your education from Purdue will take you a long way. Understand that. But also the contacts that you will make and how you treat people will take you a long way.

We all know guys that are very, very talented in all of our professions that don’t know how to treat people because they’re so damn talented they think they can get away from it. That normally ends up being sour milk. Nobody wants to work with that person or be around that person, even though they're talented. Don’t be that way. Get the big picture of what’s going on. Get the big picture of life. Treat people the right way. But learn to kill it in two different avenues: kill it through basketball and kill it through education. Then things will work out for you.”

The portal, nothing new about transfers, that's been around forever, but how has the transfer portal, the new evolution of the transfer portal, what do you think about it? Has it made your job easier, the profession easier, better?

“For me, I was at the forefront of it because I was the only coach on the subcommittee for the one-time transfer. They were really trying to figure out what the pillars were going to be so guys could transfer and be eligible right away.

They didn’t have the data when they did that. The thing for me was, it wasn’t somebody that was going to go be an NBA player or somebody who was going to be a professional basketball player. What everybody has to understand about rules through Division III, Division II, NIAA, Division I, low-major, mid-major, high-major, 99% of them are not professional basketball players.

I’m not sitting here as the coach without having the opportunity to have a scholarship at Purdue. These opportunities save lives. But if you’re not loyal to people, there's nothing wrong with transferring, there’s people in the stands that have transferred, moved, it’s a positive thing. But if you’re changing to change, and you're doing what you want to do instead of what’s best for you, now at the end of the day if it affects your education, your contacts. Every person in here got something through their education to help them, but every person in here has gotten something through the contacts they've made that have helped them move a little bit. We’ve all done that.

If I need to get another job, do something, you make a call for me, put in a call for me, help me out here. We all do that.

I wasn’t fighting for the Zach Edeys of the world. I was fighting for the people on my team, the low-majors, the mid-majors, Division II, that aren’t pros. Now they want to do something — it’s like your parents, right? — that stop you from you doing what you want to do so you can do what’s best for you so you can have a great life.

It is not about going pro or anything of that nature in my mind because 99% of them aren’t pros.

With that being said, I don’t want to take somebody’s dream away from them. You want them to have that dream, be able to accomplish some of those things. But education is going to take you a lot longer in life and help you so you can have a quality life.

Getting a scholarship and then being able to take that, get an education, is not always about basketball, it’s about having a great life and having your own family, helping other people.

If you change three or four times, you don't get your degree, don’t become a pro, don’t have any contacts, you didn’t take that opportunity and get any better, then what are we doing for young people? That doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t like anybody that devalues education. A part of this devalues education. We’ve all seen the story, first person in their family to get their education, then they start that good cycle. We all hear the news about a bad cycle. He was a great player, what happened to him? He hit some hard times. I don't want players to hit hard times. I want to help ’em.

We’ve tried to stay the same where we are with it, but I think we’re kind of an outlier. I also think where we are in our state, because we have good players there, we have good high school coaches there, Purdue has great education, so people really got to take a step back and say, If you want to move, everything on movement, not everything, but most everything on movement is not about winning and is not about maybe going to the NCAA tournament, it's about their role. They want to shoot more, they want to play more.

Now, if you have that opportunity to move, then you just want to move again, then you want to move again, the only thing you got good at was moving. Get good at basketball and get good at education, get good at doing what's best for you and your future.”

There have been a lot of people in your profession, coaches and players, whose careers were ended because they took extra benefits, stuff that today would just be minuscule. What do you think that, I don't know what the word would be, amnesty, about acknowledging that? What do you think about going back and saying, Maybe we should clear the record, whatever?

“Yeah, I agree with that. I think there needs to be a lot of deregulation on a lot of things that has happened in the past. They need to take a hard dive into looking because the amateurism was really never there, but yet we called it an amateurism. If you don’t like that, take the chance of being a pro, but yet I’m making a lot of money off of it and they’re the product, right?

It was a total contradiction. I think everybody in this room agrees with that. Hopefully we can grow. Where I don’t like it like through the NCAA, and I’ve served on a lot of committees, there needs to be a collaboration. I think his opinion matters, but I don’t know if his opinion matters over mine. I’ve sat in his chair, he hasn’t sat in mine. Your opinion matters, too.

When you collaborate, you hear everybody. Now to come together and just do a better job of, you know, because the adults were making that decision at the time that person that you mentioned, he wasn’t an adult, right? He was a supposed student-athlete. He was just kind of doing... What’s he supposed to do, right.

Yeah, I wish they could go back and be able to do that. I think that would probably be the right thing.”

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Final Four: Purdue coach Matt Painter on Zach Edey, NIL, transfer portal