March Madness features a record number of Canadians

This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Get up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here .

The NCAA basketball tournaments are a strange phenomenon. Apart from a relatively small pocket of diehards, almost nobody pays attention to college hoops — until mid-March, when it suddenly becomes the most talked-about sport in North America for a bit.

The key to March Madness, of course, is the single-elimination format, which cranks up the importance of every game and lends itself perfectly to low-stakes gambling. It's amazing how emotionally invested you can become in some random Vanderbilt vs. McNeese State matchup taking place on a neutral court in Oklahoma on a weekday afternoon, simply because you filled out a bracket and threw 20 bucks into your office pool. 

If you're not the gambling type (and lord knows we need more people like you right now) there are other ways to derive enjoyment from the men's and women's tournaments — such as cheering for the top Canadian players. So, here's a look at who to follow as the 64-team men's bracket tips off Thursday, followed by the women's on Friday.

Men's

According to the Canadian website BasketballBuzz, which does a great job of tracking this sort of thing, a total of 168 Canadians suited up for NCAA Division I men's teams this season, making our country by far the largest exporter of college basketball talent. And 36 Canadians are rostered by teams competing in the tournament, up from 20 last year and shattering the record of 30 set in 2022.

Two of them play for defending champion Florida, which is ranked fourth overall (behind Duke, Arizona and Michigan) and is the No. 1 seed in the South Region, where the Gators will face