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Here is a monumental statement about two people who will appear in the NCAA Tournament: Johni Broome and Cooper Flagg are very, very good at basketball.

This does not make the best players in men’s college hoops intriguing. Yes, we can talk about Flagg, Duke’s precocious freshman, potentially having the career of an all-time great in a matter of months. (Assuming his sprained ankle is fine.) We can discuss Broome’s steady climb from three-star recruit to national prominence as an Auburn senior. We can argue about a Final Four run impacting their legacies.

But, in a way, they’re also just too known. Same goes for the likes of Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson, Alabama’s Mark Sears and Purdue’s Braden Smith. So The Athletic looks beyond and presents the Most Intriguing Players of the 2025 NCAA Tournament (in alphabetical order):

There is the version of the 6-7 senior who is the second-leading scorer on a team with national championship aspirations: an all-SEC talent whose shooting ability can be a lethal complement to Broome’s close-to-the-basket production. There is also the version that is a total wild card: the one that was ejected from the Tigers’ first-round NCAA Tournament game last season for a flagrant foul — Auburn wound up being upset by Yale that day in Spokane, Wash. — and also ejected from this year’s regular-season finale against Alabama for the same infraction. No less an authority than Baker-Mazara’s coach, Bruce Pearl, put it this way during the SEC tournament: “Which one are we going to get?”

Veteran, calloused two-way guards tend to be valuable assets in the NCAA Tournament. Bamisile might be 95 percent callous by now. He’s on his fourth school, having spent one year apiece at Virginia Tech, George Washington and Oklahoma before settling in with the Rams. He launched a mental health app in 2024 called Maunda, inspired by the isolation and anxiety he felt at George Washington — a stress and depression that was compounded at Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the 2024-25 regular season was the 6-4 guard’s best: career-highs in points per 40 minutes (22.9), player efficiency rating (21.5), defensive rating (93.9), assist percentage (16.9) and Win Shares (3.6). Bamisile, with a 42.5-inch vertical leap and 7-foot wingspan, can be an explosive difference-maker on either end. On top of everything else: If VCU makes a run, Rams coach Ryan Odom goes from one of the hottest coaching carousel names in the country to the hottest name.

The Rams, winners of 10 straight through their Mountain West conference tournament championship, are one of the hottest teams in the field. Clifford, a 6-6 fifth-year senior guard, is likewise one of the hottest players in the bracket. Since Feb. 8, the Colorado Springs native has averaged 22.2 points and 10.1 rebounds per game. As of Selection Sunday morning, he ranked sixth in KenPom.com’s national player of the year ratings — despite losing out on Mountain West player of the year honors to New Mexico’s Donovan Dent. And there’s both increasing buzz about Clifford as an NBA Draft prospect and his head coach, Niko Medved, as a candidate for a power conference program job. This could be one of the most dangerous players on one of the most dangerous teams.

He’s a 6-9, 250-pound bruiser from Winnipeg who wears a headband despite an obviously receding hairline, and he started shooting free throws underhand — “Granny-style,” in the parlance of our times — midway through the 2024-25 season. (It hasn’t helped; Filewich shoots 31.8 percent from the stripe.) He also won Most Outstanding Player honors in the Southern Conference tournament — he averaged 13 points and eight rebounds over three games — as the sixth-seeded Terriers upset their way to an automatic bid. Wofford slotted in as a No. 15 seed, so catch this cult hero while you can.

In last year’s one-and-done ACC tournament appearance for the Tigers, Hunter missed all 10 of his shots from the field. He then went on a tear during Clemson’s unexpected run to the Elite Eight, averaging 17.8 points and 5.8 assists while earning All-Region honors. He followed that with a career-best effort offensively in 2024-25 – 16 points per game with 41.2 percent shooting from 3-point range — that tapered off toward the end of the regular season, when Hunter scored in single digits in four of Clemson’s last six games. Then he dropped 21 and 23 points, respectively, in the Tigers’ two ACC tournament games last week. (Which could’ve been more, had Hunter gotten a foul call he should’ve gotten at the end of a semifinal loss to Louisville.) So which guy shows up this March? A postseason surge from Hunter and a couple wins from the Tigers might keep the pile of ACC-related punchlines from turning into a skyscraper.

This only has a little to do with the part-time boxing, the podcasting, the flair for fashion and the fact that one of his best friends is the team chaplain. At one point, the 6-4 senior looked like a first-team All-America lock. He finished the regular season fifth in KenPom.com’s player of the year ratings. But … it didn’t feel like that by the end? Because the Golden Eagles went 4-6 from Feb. 1 to the start of the Big East tournament, probably? And yet: Is there not some Kemba Walker-esque potential here, for a guy who posted career-highs in player efficiency rating (24.8) and assist percentage (38.5) going into the NCAA Tournament? Jones shot 40.6 percent from 3-point range as a junior and has dropped to 31.2 percent this season. The former was certainly a function of Tyler Kolek providing open looks; the latter still feels like a number that could aggress to a mean. In the regular-season finale against St. John’s, Jones posted 32 points, nine rebounds and seven assists, taking 30 shots to get there and mixing in a couple head-scratching moments. That’s a decent measure of the volatility here.

Khaman Maluach shot 76.2 percent during Duke’s run to the ACC tournament title. (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)

There have been flashes from the other freshman Duke big man bound for the NBA Draft lottery. There have also been the expected ebbs for a 7-2 specimen who isn’t all the way refined just yet. But then there was the ACC tournament, in which Maluach averaged 11.7 points, 9.3 rebounds and three blocks per game while shooting 76.2 percent — including his third made 3-pointer of the entire season. We know Flagg’s health is the determinative factor to a Final Four run, because we know the competition should be stiffer than what the Blue Devils faced with Flagg sidelined in Charlotte. But a full awakening from Maluach would add a different element to the team that already started Selection Sunday at No. 1 in the NCAA’s NET rankings.

The spindly 6-8 freshman isn’t the projected NBA Draft lottery pick that classmate Kasparas Jakucionis is. Defensively, he has … limitations. But Will Riley shoots. A lot. To the tune of 16.2 attempts per 40 minutes, the most of any Illinois player, despite coming off the bench for the bulk of the year. (Which did earn him Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year honors.) Riley’s launches can go thermonuclear; review the first-half tape of the Illini’s game at Michigan State only while wearing safety goggles. Most critically? His efficiency is tracking up. In January, Riley scored 67 points in nine games while shooting 33.3 percent from the floor. From February through the end of the regular season, Riley scored 160 points across 10 games while shooting 48 percent overall. He then posted 36 total points in two Big Ten tournament appearances — another tick up. Channeled properly, this is the type of game-swinging offensive talent that chops down trees and changes postseasons. Or it combusts and takes down the whole operation. It can be a must-watch either way.

We’re coming to understand why Ben McCollum, Drake’s first-year coach, had massive success at the Division II level before arriving in Des Moines: He had star-caliber Division I players on those rosters at Northwest Missouri State. Stirtz followed his coach up the college hoops ladder and thrived, putting together a Missouri Valley Player of the Year campaign in which the 6-4 junior averaged 18.9 points, 5.9 assists, 2.2 steals and 39.3 minutes per game during the regular season — all league-bests — while shooting 56.2 percent from 2-point range and 38.1 percent from beyond the 3-point arc. As of Selection Sunday, Stirtz led the nation in Win Shares with 8.6. This program has been a consistently threatening mid-major for the past seven years, making three NCAA Tournaments in that span, but it also hasn’t won a game in this event since 1971.

We were going to feature a pesky Tritons teammate, guard Hayden Gray, whose shooting (42.8 percent from 3-point range) and pilfering (a nation-best 109 steals) recommend him as a potential game-changer. Then we read this quote from Tait-Jones, a New Zealander with a rugby background who transferred in from Division II Hawaii-Hilo, in a story from The Athletic’s C.J. Moore: “My dad and my mum, they always used to tell me, you’re not the biggest, you’re not the strongest, you’re not the most athletic, but you can hit boots.” Oh, baby. That’s the good stuff. Also, as of Selection Sunday, Tait-Jones ranked second in the nation in Win Shares (7.9), 0.6 ahead of Flagg, a national player of the year favorite. The 6-6 point-forward averaged 19.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists with 58 percent shooting during UC-San Diego’s regular season, meaning he’ll impact a potential Cinderella run as much as anyone.

In the 2023-24 season, the 6-5 guard appeared in eight games for Missouri after a transfer from Colorado State. He averaged 9.8 minutes and 2.6 points in those appearances, with a foot injury cutting short the campaign. For his last year of college basketball, Tonje landed at Wisconsin. And he became one of the most insistent scorers in the country, averaging 19.1 points per game and landing at No. 8 in KenPom.com’s national player of the year ratings as of Selection Sunday. Tonje, essentially, is a bully with the ball. He has taken 221 free throws — most of any Big Ten player — and hit 91 percent of them. But you can’t slough off him, either, given his 39.8 percent shooting from 3-point range. Having at least one player who can put pressure on the defense, at all levels, in any situation, is imperative for NCAA Tournament success. No one expected much of the Badgers or Tonje this season. Will the next few weekends continue to upend the narrative?

Mountain West rookie of the year as a freshman at New Mexico and then Big 12 Player of the Year as a sophomore in Lubbock. Fourth in the KenPom.com national player of the year standings heading into the Big 12 tournament. If someone is just verifiably good, is it all that intriguing? Maybe not. But how good Toppin can be, and how much that carries him into national visibility, is the variable. Back-to-back thunderclap games in mid-February — 41 points against Arizona State, 32 against Oklahoma State — suggested the 6-9 forward can get on a heater that changes an entire weekend. Then he finished the regular season with 21 points against Kansas, 30 against Colorado and 25 against Arizona State, confirming the theory. Despite all that production, Toppin isn’t a widely known commodity like All-America-level big men such as Broome and Dickinson and Flagg. Looking for a breakout star from this event? Don’t look much further.

The 6-4 sophomore and leading scorer for the Grizzlies arguably has the most heartbreaking story in the NCAA Tournament field. In November 2023, Williams’ father died while Williams was on the floor for Montana in a road game at Nevada. Despite that, Williams was averaging 13.4 points — which would’ve been the second-best scoring season by a freshman in program history — when a foot injury on Dec. 19 sidelined him for all but five minutes of the rest of the season. Then, in October 2024, Williams took a leave of absence from Montana when his mother died in her sleep. It left Williams and his sister, Mo’Ney, as the primary caregivers for three younger siblings — which prompted a GoFundMe campaign that has raised more than $145,000 to aid the family. On the court, Williams has been understandably mercurial. But his best nights (30 points against Tennessee, 25 against Utah State, 26 against Eastern Washington and 36 against Portland State, all on the road) suggest game-changing scoring ability.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos of Joe Bamisile, Kam Jones: Ryan M. Kelly / Getty Images, Zach Bolinger /Icon Sportswire / AP Photo)