The NCAA tournament is brimming with players from Canada. “When we were growing up in Canada, it wasn't nearly as good as it is now. So it's just spectacular to see the growth in Canadian basketball.”
Bracket Buster: How Richmond pulled off the upset over Iowa in the 2022 NCAA tournament
“It’s just beautiful to see,” Boise State guard Emmanuel Akot said Wednesday before his first-round game in Portland. “When we were growing up in Canada, it wasn't nearly as good as it is now. So it's just spectacular to see the growth in Canadian basketball.”► Guard Bennedict Mathurin, from Montreal, leads No. 1 seed Arizona Friday here against Wright State. He is the Pac-12 Conference player of the year and is likely to be a top NBA draft pick in June.
More players are switching teams like free agents after transfer restrictions were reduced last year. There’s also more competition for roster spots with a whole country to the north spilling over the border with top prospects. “It’s huge,” Montana State coach Danny Sprinkle told USA TODAY Sports Thursday when asked how important it is for his program to recruit international players, particularly from Canada. “It’s somewhere where maybe we can get a player that’s maybe above our level, that in order to come to the NCAA tournament, to win our league you have to be able to get Mountain West-level players, low Pac-12 level players. And we feel we’ve done a good job of that in the international market.
In the bigger picture, the Canadian influx in American college basketball is just another offshoot of the larger growth of basketball in Canada, especially, which had a record 18 players from Canada on opening-night rosters this season. “Ice hockey is the sport they play in Canada, but basketball is slowly growing and March Madness is a big deal for a lot of us in Canada,” Mohamed told USA TODAY Sports Thursday.
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