Meet the NCAA Tournament's Best Students

Every March, college basketball fans from across the country fill out brackets for the NCAA men's national championship tournament. Often forgotten amid the craziness and excitement of the month is the simple fact that the players competing in the tournament are students, too.

North Dakota State's Brett Winkelman.

We decided to highlight some students who are just as excited about reaching college basketball's promised land as they are about getting A's at the end of the semester. In the week leading up to the NCAA tournament, we spoke with several of the nation's top student-athletes—in particular, those who made the College Sports Information Directors Association's Academic All-American teams or the all-academic teams from conferences—to find out how they succeed both on the court and in the classroom.

The group profiled includes students from across the country and college basketball spectrum, from Duke University, a college hoops powerhouse, to North Dakota State University, which is in its first full year of Division I eligibility.