Led by center Zach Edey, the Boilermakers, who play on Friday, have earned a No. 1 seed in the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Zach Edey, the Big Ten men’s basketball player of the year, has grown exhausted, sometimes demoralized, by the focus on his body, which, at 7-foot-4 and 305 pounds, towers cartoonishly over students at Purdue University.
As his team surged to the top national ranking this season, Edey, a junior from Toronto, picked walking paths around campus that limited encounters with his shorter classmates — “the back alleys, the little side streets,” he said.