Now that the passions of March Madness have retreated, at least somewhat, cooler heads can analyze which players made some of the biggest impacts. Altamont varsity power forward and Acta Diurna reporter Frasier Horton once again shares his thoughts.

Zach Edey 

Zach Edey has to be the single most impactful player in the tournament. The 7’4 Purdue center put this Boilermakers team on his back and carried them to the national championship. He averaged a staggering 28 points, 15 rebounds, and two blocks a game, and it was almost enough to make faithful March Madness fans forget about last year’s complete and utter failure against Fairleigh Dickinson (almost). Because of last year’s performance and some of their more questionable losses, I didn’t have them going as far as the national championship, but they kept trudging through the tournament leaning on one player the whole time.

Jared McCain 

Fine, I’ll put in Jared McCain. This spot is unlike any of the others considering how different his role on his team was compared to anyone else on this list. Consider this: His totals in this tournament were 15, 30, 7, and 32, and by the weird power of math that averages out to 21 points a game, 21 points a game on a unreal 50-50-90 split! On one hand, that Duke team is chock full of scorers, so there’s no real pressure on him to produce like everyone else here. On the other hand, even in a four-game sample, making half of all your three-point shots, half of all your shots in general, and 90% of your free throws is really, really hard.  

Mark Sears 

This spot comes with an interesting caveat as I think everything Alabama right now is a product of Nate Oats, but since this is players only, I have to go with the engine behind the best offense in college basketball. It’s not often you can say that a player is bigger than his stats when he averages 21 points a game on 43% three-point shooting. It’s different because he’s the facilitator for the team as well, and if you’ve ever seen them play, you’ll know Alabama’s pace of play is annoyingly fast. As an Auburn fan, the fact that I’ve said this much about an Alabama player is a testament to how well he performed this postseason, even putting their run to the Final Four in my bracket this year.  

Dalton Knecht 

This was probably the hardest one to place. He is by far the go-to scorer for his Tennessee team, meaning that his numbers were always going to look great, but it’d be the amount of shots he took to get there that mattered. But I folded. You can’t average 26 points a game on 40% three-point shooting and not make a first team anywhere. Like I said, his field goal percentage is scary, but 37 points against Purdue? Game is game.  

Terrence Shannon Jr. 

In his final game he had 8 points. But he was the unquestionable leader of an Illinois team that looked downright dangerous. You take that 8-point game out of his four-game total and you get 26 points per game on 60% shooting; put it back in and you still come out with a 23 points-per-game average on 50% shooting. I might be a little biased considering he’s been one of my favorite players since his sophomore year at Texas Tech, but go turn on any of his tournament games this year and watch how easy this guy makes scoring look. Averages tend to go down when you go against the juggernaut that is UConn.

Frasier Horton will have his second All-NCAA team in future posts in The Acta Diurna.