This March, the globetrotters found their way to Indianapolis for the NCAA Tournament

INDIANAPOLIS – Last weekend and Monday, amid an insular country disconnected from most of the world by two prudish oceans, in an event called “Madness” only one nation has hatched and cherished, a Swiss man had an aria of a stat line. A Canadian son of Nigerian immigrants had numbers like a daydream. His Dominican teammate had a near-sonnet.

A man from Bordeaux, France, as if that weren’t enviable enough, posted 12 points and eight rebounds for favored Gonzaga. A giant of a man from Jamaica had 21 points, nine rebounds, two steals and two blocks but wound up with March sadness with Illinois. A German player for Michigan, the younger brother of another German player for Michigan who graced the 2018 Final Four, had 15 points, seven rebounds and two assists.

A Slovakian player so commanded the flow of the game that his coach, the eternal Jim Boeheim of Syracuse, raved his way into a thick paragraph.

The idea of a frenzied basketball tournament played by college students can seem batty to the rest of the world, yet it also has come to seem dreamy to the rest of the world. Of the 1,051 players on 68 teams that began here, 157 from 49 countries and four unincorporated territories listed hometowns abroad. Ten years ago, those totals were 78 players and 31 countries.

“It’s not slowing down,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said Friday, five days after his team’s soaring season ended against Loyola Chicago’s mastery. “I see it just continuing to grow. It’s a big part of what we do.”

Speaking of his team, who ever heard of a Jamaican big man (Kofi Cockburn) and a Georgian-Austrian big man (Giorgi Bezhanishvili) becoming mutual-adoring friends and cohabitating on the plains of Champaign, Illinois?

College basketball has.

As the years have gone along and the scouting has gone ascendant, the rich fabric of March Madness has grown richer. Judging by hometowns on team pages, the Final Four of 20 years ago included one foreign player, David Thomas of Canada and Michigan State, nowadays Tom Izzo’s director of basketball operations. The most recent Final Four, in 2019, had nine, with Virginia boasting five from four continents, including both a Francisco (Caffaro, from Argentina) and a Francesco (Badocchi, from Italy), and four from Texas Tech, with the excellent Davide Moretti doubling the Italian presence.

Sixty-four players this year came from 27 European lands, 40 from 12 African countries of impressive regional range, 37 from elsewhere in North America (seven from unincorporated Caribbean territories), 14 from Oceania.

Twenty-four Canadian players have appeared on floors or benches here, including Oregon’s Eugene Omoruyi, whose heart contains Canada and Nigeria, and whose line went thusly while Oregon stampeded Iowa: 34 minutes, 17 points, six rebounds, five assists, two steals, two blocks. “Well, Eugene was great, man,” said his teammate Chris Duarte, who got 23 points, three rebounds and seven assists long after showing the strength to leave his ravishing Dominican hometown of Puerto Plata. (Many wouldn’t.)

Then came Florida State’s Anthony Polite from Lugano, Switzerland, near the Italian border. The redshirt junior long since traveled the path of many of these players – through an American high school – and here he went Monday in Seminoles Coach Leonard Hamilton’s longtime system: 22 points (on 8-for-12 shooting), five rebounds, four assists, four steals, a fourth language.

“Defense first,” he said. “That’s what got us here.”

So he speaks French, Italian, English and Hamilton.

By 2021, you have everybody learning from everybody in every direction, everywhere, perhaps an epitome of the purpose of college. You have a basketball world ever shrinking, such that Underwood sees a smallish global fraternity with various veins of scouting and chatter that might go: “I know you had a young man from Georgia. Here’s another kid that I saw.” He said, “Those are the things that happen.”

“The scouting of international players is much more in-depth,” UC Santa Barbara Coach Joe Pasternack said. “You have a lot more information from scouting services that gives you the ability to trust.”

He knows. His Gauchos led the cosmopolitan standings here, with seven adventurers from six countries: Guinea, Mali, Croatia, Spain, Switzerland and Canada. Their global collaboration had a big year, winning the Big West and going 22-4 before a 63-62 first-round cruelty against Creighton. “When we took over the program (in 2017) at the University of California Santa Barbara,” he said, “part of the plan was to recruit internationally.” It works partly because, as Underwood told it, the art of perfecting is revered more abroad: Other cultures might practice “a hundred times to play 20 games,” he said, where U.S. spring and summer cultures might practice “three times to play 50 games,” and so, “It’s backward.”

It also has led coaches from coast to coast to exhilarations once unforeseeable. It has led Pasternack to a towering respect for his Malian player Amadou Sow, who went from zero English upon arrival in ninth grade in Napa, California, to Big West student-athlete of the year.

“Amadou Sow, and you can put this down, he has not seen his family (except on video) since he came to the United States in the ninth grade,” Pasternack said. “I don’t know how many young men could deal with not seeing their families since they were 14.”

On Christmas Day, the Gauchos had themselves a moment after the staff secretly arranged for families afar to record video greetings to all their players in all those languages. “It was amazingly special,” said Pasternack, who added of his players, “I just think they were all in awe.”

Now Underwood, a wine connoisseur, can say he has received Georgian wine from a player, Bezhanishvili having brought some from home. He gets to marvel at Bezhanishvili riding his bike to practice in 10 below zero and not caring, or Cockburn (from Kingston, Jamaica, then Queens) effusing about his cooking, or both plus Andre Curbelo from Puerto Rico giving a soccer demo in the team meeting room. “We’re going, ‘Wow,’ ” Underwood said.

“We didn’t grow up in a war-torn country,” he said. “We didn’t have the running water shut off at 6 o’clock at night. So there is a perspective that’s brought to (the American players) that they don’t have. So it’s very informative.” He also said of himself at 57: “It’s an area where I have to grow all the time. I didn’t know a lot about Georgia until I recruited Giorgi.”

While it’s uncertain how much Boeheim knows about Slovakia, the winner at a 2003 Final Four with one international player certainly can warble about a Slovakian player 18 years on. That’s Marek Dolezaj, whose masterful line against West Virginia went: 38 minutes, 4-for-6 shooting, 12 points, six rebounds, five assists, two steals, one block.

“He’s important every game,” Boeheim began, before getting rolling. “He breaks the press for us. He gets it in bounds. He’s the one that makes those tough passes there. Somehow he always makes one characteristically bad pass against pressure, which he did when he threw it out of bounds, but that’s OK. We spread our offense out. He knows where to go with it. He knows when to drive. He knows when somebody is going to go backdoor. He just sees things better than anybody else. He’s just a terrific basketball player. I mean, he really is. He’s one of the most underrated players in the country. To be able to play center at 6-10, 200-nothing pounds. He’s not 200 even, I don’t think, and to make all the plays he makes for us on offense and defense – I mean, drew two charges. He’s just a great, great team player. He makes winning plays that are not noticed sometimes, but they’re there. They’re there.”

A Slovakian gets a long rave from the ultimate Syracusan. How very 2021.