Before last year, North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough in 2008 was the last unanimous national player of the year to return to school. Then Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe did it. And now Purdue’s Zach Edey joins that exclusive club.

The NBA’s disdain for traditional big men combined with their enormous value in the name, image and likeness era of college basketball has made it much easier for dominant centers to come back. See also: UNC’s Armando Bacot, who has already played 132 games and will be 24 in March and might just stay in Chapel Hill forever if they’d let him.

The hard part: actually repeating as national player of the year. Neither Hansbrough nor Tshiebwe could do it. No one since Ralph Sampson in the early 1980s has done it. Sampson not only repeated but three-peated as Naismith, Wooden and AP Player of the Year. So will the mythologically sized, 7-foot-4, 285-pound Edey finally be the next to go back-to-back?

The best case for it is that he’s gotten better — rather significantly — every season so far: From 8.7 to 14.4 to 22.3 points per game. From 4.4 to 7.7 to 12.9 rebounds per game. From 1.1 to 1.2 to 2.1 blocks per game. From 2.3 to 2.0 to 1.6 fouls per game. Edey has gotten smarter, stronger, more confident and competent seemingly every day he’s been in college.

“This is his seventh year of organized basketball,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “He is at a different learning curve and growth than normal people at age 22 and playing in college. So I think he still is getting better. He really improved last year his free-throw percentage, his rebounds per minute, his ability to protect the rim. Two years ago, he was borderline non-existent as a rim protector.”

Last season, Edey was second in the Big Ten in blocks. He also led the nation in offensive rebounds, total rebounds, win shares, player efficiency rating and plus/minus. If he’s better than that this season — or even if he posts a similar stat line — who could possibly overtake him for Player of the Year?

History tells us that in an Edey vs. The Field proposition, we should take the field. So here, at least according to The Athletic staff’s preseason vote, is The Field: Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson (five votes), Duke’s Kyle Filipowski (two), Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner (one) and Marquette’s Tyler Kolek (one). Three of our esteemed colleagues, when asked who could beat Edey for player of the year, voted “nobody.” Pretty bold prediction there.

Dickinson and Filipowski feel like the best bets because they’re going to put up big numbers for bluebloods who are legitimate national title contenders. The 7-2, 260-pound Dickinson also enjoys maximum name recognition after three seasons as a star at Michigan, and because his personality is even bigger than he is. Likewise, if Kolek can keep Marquette in the top five all year, the swaggy guard who once said of preseason pollsters “F— ‘em!” could become a media darling too.

But here’s another thing recent history suggests: Somebody we aren’t even thinking about right now might blow up this season and take home all those bronze figurines. Tshiebwe wasn’t on any preseason All-America teams the year he won. Edey wasn’t either last season. If anybody tries to tell you they predicted Obi Toppin was sweeping all the Player of the Year awards in 2020, they’re lying. He was not among the 21 players to receive at least one vote for the AP’s preseason All-America team that year.

What if, say, Max Abmas just goes nuclear this season at Texas? He’s already got more than 2,500 career points and 400 made 3-pointers after four years at Oral Roberts — where he enjoyed a star turn in the 2021 NCAA Tournament — and now he’ll get a much larger stage in the Big 12. Might the 6-foot-tall (maybe) Abmas become the shortest player of the year since Kansas’ 5-11 Frank Mason III won in 2017? Mason also didn’t make anyone’s preseason All-America team that year.

Point being: Can somebody dethrone Edey? Absolutely. Do we have a good track record of predicting who that might be? Absolutely not.

(Our panel of voters: Nicole Auerbach, Tobias Bass, Brian Bennett, Scott Dochterman, Brian Hamilton, Brendan Marks, CJ Moore, Dana O’Neil, Brendan Quinn, Joe Rexrode, Kyle Tucker, and Justin Williams.)

Previous predictions:

Surprise team

Disappointing team

First-year coaches

Freshman of the year

(Photo of Purdue’s Zach Edey shooting over Duke’s Kyle Filipowski last year: Soobum Im / Getty Images)