INDIANAPOLIS – Smiling, Zach Edey shrugged as he pawed at the red-pink scratches traveling down his right bicep postgame Friday.

They stood as testament to another physical night in the post for college basketball’s best player. Another team that tried in vain to slow Edey down — by means legal or otherwise — before eventually giving up and grabbing. And pushing. And hooking. And at one point more or less pulling Edey down backward, arms around his neck.

Grambling State tried virtually everything, succeeded in nearly nothing and ended the evening the same way 29 other Purdue opponents have this season. The Boilermakers consigned last March’s ghosts firmly to history with a 78-50 win Friday in the round of 64, behind 30 points, 21 rebounds and 31 minutes of sheer dominance from their talisman.

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This is the Zach Edey Experience, and once in a while it comes with battle scars.

“This won’t leave any marks,” he said.

He is the most-fouled player in America, in addition to all the other ways in which Edey has no peers. His average, 9.8 fouls per 40 minutes, actually ticked up from 9.7 after Friday’s game. The official box score credited Edey with drawing 12 fouls, one more than an unofficial IndyStar count.

As if only drawing 11 fouls is normal.

In their postgame media session, Tigers (21-15) players were asked if they’d ever seen anyone quite like the two-time Big Ten player of the year. Tra’Michael Moton simply responded: “No.”

“I don't think nobody has seen anything like Zach Edey,” Kintavious Dozier said, elaborating slightly more than his teammate. “That's kind of unreal. What they say he is on paper, he's exactly that.”

None of this is new for Edey. Nothing is unfamiliar anymore, even the scars.

The worst he still wears, none more prominently than the friendly fire further down his right arm. It happened in a closed-door scrimmage his freshman year, when former Boilermaker Trevion Williams accidentally handed Edey a cut so deep it’s scarred over now, a keloid raised above his skin.

Welcome to college.

“It was before any games or anything,” Edey said, laughing.

In the years since, Edey has grown from freshman curiosity into senior All-American. Along the way, Purdue (30-4) has played some of the most difficult schedules in the country, seeking out nonconference meetings with the likes of Gonzaga, Duke, Arizona and Marquette, and working their way through back-to-back outright Big Ten titles.

There’s nothing he hasn’t seen, no problem he hasn’t had to solve at some point across the past four years. And it shows.

"We’ve seen everything and we’re not unprepared for anything," Edey said.

Friday’s puzzle was Grambling State, a team that hasn't doubled the post barely at all this season.

Most teams double Edey. Why wouldn’t you? But most teams aren’t preparing for Purdue on a two-day turnaround (Grambling State played in the First Four earlier this week). That’s not a lot of time to install a defense you’ve barely run all season, if at all.

“You normally get a pretty good grip, especially in conference, of what they’re gonna do before you go into the game,” Painter said. “When you play a team that’s played the whole year and they haven’t doubled at all (it’s tougher). They’ve messed with the post a little bit but they haven’t doubled. Now, are they actually gonna do that? Or are they going to leave him 1-on-1? From a physical standpoint, they stayed 1on-1 for the most part.”

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.

Defenders whose eye line rose to Edey’s armpit fought hopelessly to hold position against a player too big, too strong and too skilled to be controlled. Two different Tigers had four fouls before the first media timeout of the second half. Defenders used two arms, instead of the allowed one. There were hooks, grabs, those scratches — anything to keep Edey grounded.

Not very far into the first half, Grambling State's Jalen Johnson, a Manual grad, essentially resorted to pulling Edey down by his neck, resulting in a flagrant 1 foul. It was the sort of foul that, while obviously reckless, felt mostly like surrender. He wasn’t being dirty so much as he’d just run out of ideas.

Tigers post players did their best, worked their hardest, pushed back as best they could. And all they got for their toil was foul trouble and a face full of Edey. Tigers coach Donte’ Jackson was asked afterward what he’d tell other teams preparing for Purdue across the balance of this NCAA tournament. His response amounted, essentially, to “good luck.”

“I would tell them to figure out how they're going to handle Zach Edey,” Jackson said, “and the reality of the situation is I hope you're equipped for it.”

Impossible to restrain, Edey made little bits of history, like he so often does. He became just the third player in the past 50 years to go for 30 and 20 in an NCAA tournament game.

This is a hot-button topic around Purdue this time of year, the perception that Edey gets too friendly a whistle and too soft a touch from officials. There’s an extent, Painter knows, to which officials simply can’t call everything against Edey, so there has to be balance somewhere.

Which leads naturally to the paradox of playing Zach Edey. Nowhere in the laws of the game does it require fouls to be equal. Sometimes a player is just unguardable. Not every problem has a solution.

“They can’t call everything that goes against him, and I think that’s how he gets away with things,” Painter said last week at the Big Ten tournament. “You see some fouls after the game and you’re like, ‘Hey man, he fouled twice and they didn’t call it, but he got fouled 12 times and they didn’t call it.’ The problem is, from an officiating standpoint and the rules, if you go by the letter of the law, and you talk about, you can use your bent elbow, your forearm, and then you’ve got guys using their knee and two hands, you’re just looking like you’re fouling.

“It’s just like, don’t put your knee up against him, don’t put two hands up against him, but when he’s barreling down Main Street, it’s easier said than done.”

That doesn’t always make it sit well.

Sitting near their band, Grambling State fans grew increasingly frustrated with the earned imbalance in fouls that eventually led to the justified imbalance in points. Repeatedly pointing out the foul discrepancy — per the final stats, Edey drew more (12) than Purdue committed (6) — complaints from the Tigers’ traveling support routinely fell on deaf ears.

After the game, in the puzzle of tunnels connecting Gainbridge Fieldhouse’s many locker rooms and luxury suites, one of those fans passed Edey on his way out. Extending his hand and to shake Edey’s in congratulations, the fan said simply, “Good game, big fella.”

There wasn’t much else to do. There rarely ever is.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Zach Edey an unstoppable force for Purdue basketball in March Madness