Archdeacon: ‘The most interesting man in college basketball’

That was Zed Key Sr. talking about the guidance he and his wife Carol gave to their son, who they call Z.J., but who’s been known at Ohio State the past four seasons and now at the University of Dayton as Zed, too.

And Mom and Dad knew what they were talking about.

Young Zed, who’s now 22, grew “height-wise” to 6-foot-8 and though he’s no longer the 270 pounds he weighed as an OSU freshman, he’s still a solid 220.

“Notoriety-wise” he’s bigger than that.

He was a fan favorite at OSU — where he played 121 games and got his undergrad degree — and he’ll almost surely be similarly embraced at UD, where, for his final season of college basketball, he joins two other transfers this year.

Posh Alexander, a 6-foot guard has joined the Flyers after a season at Butler and three before that at St. John’s. And 6-foot-10 Jacob Conner, an Alter High School grad, has come in after two years at Marshall.

On the court at OSU, Key was known for his on-court animation that was punctuated by his trademark two-hand “raise-the-roof” pump ups following a dunk and his “finger guns” once he dunked and was fouled for an and-one situation.

A scarlet and gray Pied Piper, he soon had the whole Value City Arena crowd mimicking his antics.

People especially embraced him because they knew he was even more engaging off the floor.

Former Buckeyes coach Chris Holtmann once called him, “The most interesting man in college basketball.”

He has a pet snake — a two-foot and growing ball python — named 7 who has his own Instagram page, had fans knitting him thimble-sized hats, and sometimes could be found draped around Zed’s neck like a snakeskin sautoir.

He also has a cat, a rescue from the Columbus Humane Society, called Scatpack.

And then there’s his Lincoln Town Car lowrider with a hydraulic system that can make it jump, shimmy side to side and slow roll on three wheels.

Even his first name is colorful.

It started with his grandfather, Willie, who picked up the Zedwood nickname in homage to the character Dagwood from the old Blondie comic strip. Wille then named his son Zed and in turn, Zed Sr. and Carol named their boy Zed Jackson Key, hence the Z.J.

As for Holtmann’s claim, Zed shrugged the other day, then laughed:

“I think it’s just because my hobbies are extremely strong, especially the car hobby.”

The side interests draw scrutiny because his main pursuit has been “strong,” as well.

In his four seasons at OSU, he scored 895 points and grabbed 603 rebounds. He likely would have topped the 1,000 point mark as a Buckeye, but his junior season — his best season when he averaged 10.8 points and 7.5 rebounds a game — was cut short by a left shoulder injury that required labrum surgery.

Last season he came off the bench in 34 games, started two, and averaged 6.6 points a contest. He was second on the team in dunks, third in blocked shots.

During his career he had several big games:

There was the game-winning blocked shot in double overtime against Maryland last year; and 22 points against Rutgers, 19 versus Cincinnati and an 11-11 double-double against Northwestern as a junior. The year before that he scored 20 versus Duke and made the the game-winning basket against Akron at the buzzer as a sophomore.

He transferred to Dayton — which initially had offered him a scholarship in October of 2018 when he was a high school junior in New York — because he saw more of an opportunity now to make an impact with a team that really seemed to want him.

But before he made 75-minute trek from Columbus, he forwarded one warning to the folks at UD.

“I told them, ‘Look, I’m coming with pets. I hope the person I’m with is used to animals,’” he said with a laugh.

Although he said he was supposed to live in the Caldwell Apartments where most of the other basketball players reside, he and Alexander were moved into neighboring apartments not far from campus.

So, he and 7 and Scatpack live by themselves.

When Zed was a Buckeye, there were a couple of teammates who didn’t fully embrace his serpent side.

One was suitemate E.J. Liddell. Although they had separate bedrooms, he and Zed and two other players shared the same living room, kitchen and two bathrooms.

“E.J. didn’t like the snake at all,” he grinned. “He wouldn’t hold it, wouldn’t even touch it.”

Holtmann, on the other hand, allowed Zed — who wears a silver chain with a 7 pendant topped with a coiled snake around his neck — to bring the python into his home.

“There was just one stipulation,” Zed said. “His wife told me ‘Just don’t let it get loose in my home, please!’”

Her request wasn’t without merit.

“He did get out one time when I was in the dorm,” Zed said. “It was 2 a.m. and I tore my room up trying to find him.

“I looked under the bed, in the dresser, behind the dresser, in the closet. It turned out, somehow, he’d climbed to the top of my closet and was in one of my shoes!”

If you look on the snake’s Instagram page — @7thesnake — you see photos of him curled up in shoes, slithering across a basketball, wrapped around Key’s arm or throat and wearing his tiny little hats.

The snake took center stage during an ESPNU broadcast of an Ohio State-Towson State game in December of 2021.

The announcers — Mark Adams and Mike Corey — spent several minutes talking about ball pythons, discussing everything from their diet and temperament to their sex lives.

Adams even used a fake orange snake as a prop.

A fan favorite

Parental Advice – Part Two:

Carol Key has worked for the New York City Housing Authority for 30 years. Her husband has his own business — Pro Image Installations — which installs TVs, home theater systems, and surveillance cameras.

The couple has been very involved in the lives of their two children: younger daughter, Jade, now a student at the University of Albany; and Zed, who was always big for his age his dad said:

“When he started basketball as a six-year-old, he was almost a foot taller than the other kids his age.

“I told my wife, ‘With his height, if we could teach him a baby hook shot, he’d be unstoppable at this age.’”

Zed Sr. said Carol was a great teacher.

She was a Hall of Fame basketball player at Tappan Zee High in Orangeburg, New York, and then played at the University of Buffalo.

“We had a tile floor in the kitchen and my wife came up with the idea to teach him to pivot,” Zed Sr. said. “She told him ‘OK, plant your foot on this tile and then turn and step on this tile.’

“She got him to pivot back and forth, right and left, using the tiles. And he’d act like he was catching the ball and then go through the motion of shooting a hook shot.”

Eventually, they moved the sessions outdoors to the full-sized, blacktop basketball court they have in the backyard of their Bay Shore, N.Y., home.

The playing surface was painted a vibrant blue and orange — New York Knicks’ colors — and in his coming-of-age days, Zed labored out there for hours.

“I tell everyone that basketball court in the backyard was a great investment,” Zed Sr. said. “We’d have him out there working on his shot, working on his moves. Whatever it cost us to put in, it helped, potentially, to get him a scholarship.”

After his freshman and sophomore years at Brentwood High, Zed moved to Long Island Lutheran and drew offers from several schools, including Rutgers, Providence, St. John’s. Massachusetts, Seton Hall, UD and then, Ohio State.

In his very first game with the Buckeyes, Zed came off the bench against Illinois State, scored 12 points in 17 minutes and unveiled his finger guns after just 5 ½ minutes of play. The raise-the-roof pump ups soon followed, and a fan favorite was born.

By his senior season, this had become heartfelt hoop theater between Zed and the crowd.

“Watching all that was hilarious, and we loved it,” Zed Sr. said. “Raising the roof is old school. Nobody was doing that then. But the people got into it.

“He was beloved at Ohio State. He walked down the street, and it was like being with the mayor. Everybody was coming over to talk or get autographs.

“We’d go through the mall and my wife and I would just stand back and watch…and smile. It was great to see as a parent. Just a beautiful thing.”

If their son got the hoops talent from Carol, he got the sense of panache from Zed Sr.

“My dad had a pet snake when he was young, too, but my mom made him get rid of it when I was born,” Zed said. “She thought the snake was gonna eat me!”

Zed Sr. remembered those days a bit wistfully: “Yeah, it was a boa constrictor — Jake the Snake. When my wife was pregnant, she was like, ‘Listen, that snake can’t be here when the baby comes home. So, I had to get rid of it.”

He had a lowrider then, too, but he was able to keep that.

“My brother had one first, a Cadillac Coupe DeVille, and we’d go to car shows and I fell in love with low riders,” he said.

“I got mine — a ‘79 Chevy Impala — in 1997. It’s all redone and has an airbrushed paint job.”

The car, dubbed “Key Player,” has Zed Sr’s’ image on the hood with his arms out and his palms open as a deck of cards cascades from his fingertips around the sides and back of the vehicle.

The family has a photo of 2-year-old Zed sitting on the roof of the car and another of him at age 20, sitting on the hood. In both shots, he’s wearing a big smile.

Zed Sr. said he likes to slow roll his car — you can almost hear War’s 1975 R & B hit “Low Rider” playing in the background — while his son has a more amped-up hydraulic system so “the bounce is really high.”

Zed not only worked on his car when he was at Ohio State, but he often fixed teammates’ cars.

The OSU media guide described him as “one of the most NIL-savvy players on the team” and he would seem to be a natural now for anything related to cars

And yet, at OSU he said he understood the difference in being a basketball player there and a football player.

He now drives a red Volkswagen Golf R32 – only 5,000 were made – and while the car is an investment, he got a reality check when he drove by the Bucks’ football facility.

“Ohio State football’s a different animal,” he laughed. “I thought my cars —the Lincoln, the Golf — were nice, but then I looked over in the football parking lot and all I could say was ‘Ooooh…. Yeah!’

“That’s a different class of cars over there!”

‘Make the most of it’

Parental Advice – Part Three:

“We told him to enjoy this,” Zed Sr. said. “This is it. There’s no year six: ‘You got a freebie season because of COVID so make the most of it. Go all in and this will be a good experience.’”

Zed sees this as a chance to really come into his own and have a team rely on him.

In some ways — with his modest stats and what’s been an off-the-bench role — he’s a lot like his Lincoln lowrider, which doesn’t have a fancy airbrush look. It still has its beige factory paint.

“It looks like a regular Lincoln Town Car, just with small wheels,” he said. “It doesn’t have flashy paint, but I enjoy that. It doesn’t draw attention to itself until I flip the switch and it does what it does.”

He is familiar with UD Arena. He played 21 minutes and scored three points — it was his first game back from surgery — in the Buckeyes exhibition win here last October and mostly remembers the hyped-up, sold-out crowd:

“I can’t wait to be a part of it as a Flyer myself.”

Zed Sr. likes the sound of that:

“Don’t get me wrong, he really loved Ohio State, but I love this move.

“After he got injured, I thought he was looked at differently there. I think this will be good for him and for Dayton.

“I feel like I’m a very good reader of people and the Dayton coaches and the staff, they seem very genuine. They seem to want Zed and he wants this, too.”

The Keys plan to be at as many games at UD Arena as possible. They love watching their son and the crowd interact, but Zed Sr. admitted they also feel his spirit when they’re at home watching the games on TV:

“We get into it and my wife and I are sitting there raising the roof just like he does.”

So, in the end, the son taught Mom and Dad something, as well.