Canadians are still playing key roles for March Madness contenders

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The NCAA men's basketball tournament soft-launched last night with the first two play-in games for the main 64-team bracket, which gets underway Thursday. The women's play-ins start tonight before the tournament proper tips off on Friday.

Here's a look at some Canadian players to watch in each tourney:

Men's

A total of 20 Canadians are rostered by teams that qualified for the men's tournament. That's about the same number as last year, but there was one very big departure (figuratively and literally). 7-foot-4 centre Zach Edey, who won back-to-back NCAA player of the year awards and led Purdue to the championship game last April, is now averaging nine points and eight rebounds as an NBA rookie after the Memphis Grizzlies drafted him ninth overall.

With Edey gone, Canada can no longer boast the most dominant player in U.S. men's college basketball. But it still has someone atop one of the major statistical leaderboards.

Ryan Nembhard, the playmaking senior point guard for perennial tournament presence Gonzaga, led all of Division I with 9.8 assists per game while also averaging 10.8 points and a team-high 1.7 steals. The younger brother of Andrew Nembhard (who also played for Gonzaga and is now in his third season with the NBA's Indiana Pacers) broke his own school record for most assists in a single season — pretty impressive considering John Stockton went to Gonzaga. Nembhard, who hails from Aurora, Ont., also bettered his own record for assists in one season by a Canadian at any school (which once belonged to his brother) and shattered Marcus Carr's all-time Canadian