Chicago Bulls: 3 players who were stars in March Madness

Between the rookie former North Carolina Tar Heels point guard Coby White, Providence Friars point guard Kris Dunn, and Arizona Wildcats power forward Lauri Markkanen, it was hard to pick who the last Chicago Bulls player on this list would be. But the Bulls player who had the third best run in any NCAA Tournament he played in was the former Duke Blue Devils center Wendell Carter Jr.

During his run under head coach Mike Krzyzewski in the 2018 NCAA Tournament, WCJ got to play in four postseason games. Three of those games yielded wins over the Iona Gaels, Rhode Island Rams, and the Syracuse Orange. Rhode Island had a few good NCAA Tournament runs in the last four or five years. But Duke was able to take care of business in 2018 against them in the Round of 32.

Duke wound up getting ousted by the Kansas Jayhawks in the Elite 8, but this was still a solid run by most considerations. There is a higher expectation for Duke to make a deep run into the NCAA Tournament than most other college basketball programs would hold. But it was to no fault of Carter Jr.’s that Duke was knocked out by Kansas in their fourth game.

In those four games that Carter Jr. played in the 2018 NCAA Tournament, he scored in the double-digits all but one time, and he had one double-double. His per game stats in the NCAA Tournament were pretty well rounded as he averaged 11.5 points per game, seven rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.2 steals, and one block, while shooting 53.3 percent from the field and missing each of his five attempts from beyond the arc.

If not for Duke getting knocked out in the Elite 8, Carter Jr.’s two-way production in this NCAA Tournament might have gotten him All-Tournament Team considerations.