Stars are made during just about every deep tournament run and in retrospect, many of them are obvious. If someone had told you beforehand that Villanova was going to win the 2016 tournament, it would not have been a stretch to guess Ryan Arcidiacono might have been the tourney’s Most Outstanding player. Ditto Joel Berry II with North Carolina last season, or Tyus Jones for Duke three years ago, or Shabazz Napier for Connecticut the year before that.
But if a team is going to make a deep run and eke out March’s unforgivingly small margins, it will often need star turns—sometimes for a game, sometimes for a moment—from its supporting cast.