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Johni Broome and Cooper Flagg
The NCAA men’s basketball championship always delivers.
This year’s March Madness kicked off on CBS with the bracket reveal, also known as Selection Sunday, on March 16. Now, sixty-eight teams will compete in seven rounds over three weeks, ending with the national championship match on April 7. Basketball fanatics can catch games throughout the tournament on CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, ESPNU, TBS, TNT and TruTV.
Read on to learn all about five collegiate men’s basketball players who look to take their standout seasons into March Madness.
Cooper Flagg (Duke University's Blue Devils)
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Cooper Flagg
The Duke University freshman has quickly established himself as the most promising NBA prospect. He graduated early from high school to play for the Blue Devils as a 17-year-old, and the 6-foot-9 forward is already in a league of his own.
He scored an Atlantic Coast Conference freshman record of 42 points in a season-best performance against Notre Dame on Jan. 11. But the 17-year-old star has put in fantastic showings across an all-time great season, leading his team across points, rebounds, assists and steals per game.
The hype behind Cooper Flagg is just getting started, and it’ll only build the longer he plays college basketball — which he plans to, for now: “S—, I want to come back next year,” he revealed to The Athletic.
Johni Broome (Auburn University's Auburn Tigers)
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Johni Broome
Auburn Tigers forward Johni Broome was named by the Associated Press as Player of the Year in the Southeastern Conference, and along with Flagg, is the favorite for National Player of the Year. The senior has led his team to No.1 in the SEC and a 27-4 overall record with an average of 18.6 points and 10.6 rebounds per game.
After a disappointing first-round loss in the 2024 NCAA tournament, the Tigers will use the early exit as fuel to rebound to a title.
“It’s a new season, so we got a different team. And we’re coming back trying and make history again,” Broome told the NCAA. “[The loss] is definitely in the back of our minds, and it’s definitely motivation.”
Mark Sears (University of Alabama's Alabama Crimson Tide)
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Mark Sears
Mark Sears is the Alabama Crimson Tide’s leading scorer with a 19.2 average — more than seven points ahead of the second-highest. What he lacks in height, Sears makes up for in craftiness and versatility on the court, and he’s adept at scoring, assisting and rebounding.
The senior ended Alabama’s regular season with a bang when he landed a game-winning buzzer-beater against the Auburn Tigers to clinch the match 93-91.
“We showed the world," Sears said in a postgame interview with ESPN. "We learned a lot from these seven games to prepare for the SEC Tournament and March Madness."
Alex Karaban (University of Connecticut's UConn Huskies)
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Alex Karaban
UConn’s Alex Karaban seeks his and the Huskies’ third consecutive NCAA championship, and although the team is only third in the Big East Conference, the Huskies have notoriously turned it up to another level for the postseason.
The quest for the three-peat is salient for Karaban, who initially declared for the 2024 NBA Draft but decided to return for another year at UConn. For the 2024-25 season, Karaban has stepped into a leadership role on the team as they try to become the first team since UCLA in 1969 to win three in a row.
“As long as my voice is there 100 percent during the game, that's all that matters," Karaban told NBC Sports Boston in October 2024. “That's why I did come back, is to help lead this team to a three-peat."
Hunter Dickinson (University of Kansas' Kansas Jayhawks)
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Hunter Dickinson
The Kansas Jayhawks senior fittingly wears his team’s No. 1 jersey, averaging 17.6 points and 10 rebounds per game. He looks to cap his collegiate career with a national championship title. Despite the Jayhawks’ disappointing season, which saw them unranked for the first time since the 2020-21 season, Dickinson still has hope for a deep March Madness run.
Ahead of the Big 12 Conference championship tournament, the 7-foot-2 player told Forbes he wants to “build some momentum” in the final games to “try to get some fireworks going for March Madness.”
Read the original article on People
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