HAMILTON, Ont. (July 4, 2022) -- Up 21 with a little over 13 minutes left to play in the Canadian Senior Men’s Team’s FIBA World Cup 2023 Qualifier contest Friday against the Dominican Republic, the assembled crowd inside Hamilton’s FirstOntario Centre were beginning to grow restless.

They knew the game was well in and hand – and Canada did end up winning, 95-75, to improve to a perfect 5-0 in its qualifying campaign – and the fans were looking for something else for them to really sink their teeth into.

Staring from a few loud individuals, a chant started to echo throughout the gym.

“We want Edey!”

Those calls for Zach Edey, the Purdue centre, who will be entering his junior season in the fall, weren’t immediately answered for Canadian coach Nick Nurse as Canada took a timeout with 6:43 left to play but didn’t sub in the object of desire were met with some playful grumbles of disappointment, but soon were converted into uproarious applaud and cheer when, with 4:23 left to play and the Canadian side leading 85-64, the 20-year-old checked in for his Senior Men's National Team debut.

In 4:23 of work out there, Edey scored two points, going 2-for-4 from the free-throw line, unfortunately missed a little baby hook underneath basket but managed to pull down three rebounds, one of which coming on the offensive glass.

After the game, Senior team coach Nurse as a little protective of his young big man.

“First of all, I think that you want to say this as respectfully as I can, we certainly appreciate all the fans and noise and all the cheering and all the stuff that they do big time from the bottom of our hearts,” Nurse said. “I want (people to know Edey’s) a serious player, though. I want to make sure that this isn't (anything else other than that). “Like, we're trying to figure out how to put him in the right places defensively and offensively and use his God-given talent that he's been given. I want to make sure, and I'm trying to say this as directly but nicely as I can, he's a serious player that's improving a lot and I think he gives us a unique factor.

“Now we've got to build that up. That was his first time out there. We kind of got a game plan for how we're going to use him. I got about four or five minutes of it tonight, but we'll continue to build it and hopefully it becomes a factor that really helps our team someday down the road.”

The defence Nurse was coming to for Edey is understandable when you consider it from the perspective of basketball fans in the past cheering in a similar fashion for a player like the seven-foot-six, 311-pound Tacko Fall, whose had short stints in the NBA and is certainly a serious player but his sheer size may detract from that a little bit.

A similar string can be traced to Edey and his seven-foot-four, 295-pound frame, but as the only non-professional player on the team and as part of the player pool, to think anything less of him being there as a serious, contributing member would be foolhardy.

“For me, the progress is like this. ‘Hey, we’re getting ready to go to camp in a few months, and I’ve just seen this kid Zach Edey at Purdue’ – this was a couple years ago. So, I get some tape and I look at him and I’m kind of like, ‘He’s kind of interesting. He’s not bad,’” Nurse said during training camp ahead of this third wind of World Cup qualifying. “I thought I saw him doing some really competitive/aggressive things like dunking on people and staring them down and I was like I kind of liked it, but I still didn’t know.

“And then when we got him in camp, like it’s typical for a young guy, Day 1 his eyes were big the whole time and I was like, ‘Uh-oh, he’s a little young to be here, maybe.’ But after that, like Days 2, 3, 4, he was a problem. Like, our guys couldn’t keep him off the glass and, all of a sudden, you were seeing – he was blocking shots – you were seeing this guy’s become a problem for our senior guys here out there in the scrimmage session. So, that’s when I started saying let’s see if we maybe could find a spot for him.”

Edey previously helped Canada to a bronze medal at the FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup 2021, averaging 15.1 points, 14.1 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game while shooting 56 per cent from the field.

As Nurse alluded, he’s been in camp with the Senior team before and has held his own against more mature competition.

“He’s got a good IQ and also, to complement that, he’s got a great work ethic,” Nurse said of Edey. “He is a hard worker. He has some rigid things that he believes in. Like, he’s not leaving the gym until he does his X amount of jump hooks with both hands – on the front, from the side, you know. Like, there’s literally nothing taking him out of the gym until he does some things. He starts and ends each practice and each workout in a certain way and he’s just kind religious to that.”

A big man who is borderline ritualistic about the way he goes about his work seems bound to go far in his career.

He didn’t get a very long run in Hamilton on Canada Day, but with the third window closing Monday as Canada visits the U.S. Virgin Islands and the team having wrapped up a spot into the second round of qualification and holding the largest point differential of all teams in the Americas region, the opportunity is ripe for Edey to get a longer leash.

Regardless how much or little Edey gets to play, the fact that he, still just a college student, is right in the thick of it with the senior team is something doesn’t take for granted.

“It’s crazy, obviously, to walk in the room and everybody is making millions of dollars and I’m still in college,” Edey said. “It’s really crazy to think about, but it’s truly an honour.