Michael Beasley (photo. KSU)

March Madness is where some stars are made (Bryce Drew) while other stars fade (Aaron Gray). What we’re doing over this two-part segment is putting you up on 16 Players 2 Watch during the NCAA Tournament: one guy from every number-seed in the field. For example, out of the four #16 seeds, we’ll tell you about one player in particular that you should keep an eye on to make some noise in the Dance. Then one player from the #15 seeds, one from the #14 seeds and so on, all the way down to the #1 seeds.

16. Anthony Vereen, F, UT-Arlington
The 6-7, 230-pound junior doesn’t even start and yet still leads the Mavericks in scoring (13.6 ppg) while playing just over 22 minutes a night. One reason he’s so efficient? Vereen converts 56 percent of his tries from the field. During the season he racked up eight nights of 20-plus points, including a 25-point, 9-board outing in the Southland Conference championship game. Obviously his UT-Arlington team is wildly overmatched against #1-seed Memphis, and Vereen — a former high school teammate of Gerald Green’s at Gulf Shores Academy in Houston — will find it tougher to get quality shots with big Joey Dorsey patrolling the paint.

15. Garrison Carr, PG, American
Five years ago, I watched Garrison Carr nearly take down Seattle high school powerhouse Rainier Beach on some David-versus-Goliath tip. A 5-foot-nuthin’, 100-and-nuthin’ kid with a goofy-looking Afro (picture a mini-Ronald Ramon), Carr dropped bombs on an RB squad that included Terrence Williams (Louisville), C.J. Giles (Kansas/Oregon State), Lodrick Stewart (USC) and Rodrick Stewart (Kansas) — scaring the hell out of the Vikings before ultimately taking an L. Now Carr is a junior in college, he’s put a considerable amount of muscle on his frame (5-11, 165) and he has an actual grown man’s haircut. He leads the Eagles with 18.1 points per in his first year as a starter; against big-name comp he dropped 26 on Dayton and 16 on Georgetown; and in Patriot League play he scored 32 against Lafayette, 30 on Bucknell and had eight other games of 20-plus points. American drew #2-seed Tennessee in the first round, and their only chance of keeping pace with the chuck-and-duck Volunteers is if Carr gets hot and drops a ton of buckets. And you know he’s not going away: Garrison has played the full 40 minutes in nine of American’s last 11 games.

14. Sundiata Gaines, PG, Georgia
The Tournament’s biggest Cinderella only goes as far as Gaines takes them. The heart and soul of the Bulldogs, Gaines is a four-year starter who’s putting up 14.8 points, 6.1 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.8 steals per game. First-round opponent Xavier has a wave of guards they can throw at the NYC native, but he’s already put up big numbers against backcourt-heavy teams like Gonzaga (21 pts, 6 rebs, 5 asts, 3 stls), Tennessee (23.5 ppg in two meetings), Kentucky (15 pts, 7 rebs), Florida (32 pts, 9 rebs, 5 asts), and Mississippi State (20 pts, 5 rebs, 4 asts).

13. Michael Jenkins, SG, Winthrop
After dropping 33 points and six threes in the Big South championship game, the 6-3 senior Jenkins now has to deal with one of the toughest defensive teams in the country in #4-seed Washington State. It’s likely that WSU will leave Jenkins (14.3 ppg) in the hands of their own senior standout, 6-6 lockdown specialist Kyle Weaver. In five of Winthrop’s 11 losses this year, Jenkins was held to single-digit scoring, including one game against High Point where he finished with just two points and went 0-for-6 from the field. Jenkins will get a lot of screens to help him shake free of Weaver, but he needs to knock down whatever open looks he does get if the Eagles want to pull off an upset.

12. Dionte Christmas, SG, Temple
Thursday’s Michigan State/Temple game is one of those where neither team might not crack 45 points…unless Christmas goes on one of his hot streaks. A holdover from the John Chaney era, the 6-5 junior can either be really bad (3-for-13 vs. Tennessee; 5-for-16 vs. Duke) or really good (32 points vs. Florida; 37 against Duquesne). He has been more consistent this year than he was last year, though, on his way to putting up 20.2 points and six boards a night.

11. Michael Beasley, PF, Kansas State
Who else are you gonna watch? The most talented player in all of college basketball doesn’t have the supporting cast around him to make a serious championship run unless he goes beyond Beast Mode for six straight games — which isn’t totally out of the question, but a little too much to ask. The first-round matchup between Beasley (26.5 ppg, 12.4 rpg) and USC’s O.J. Mayo (20.8 ppg) will be the game everyone makes sure to catch on Thursday.

10. Demetric Bennett, SG, South Alabama
Bennett, a 6-4 senior, was a Top-100 recruit coming out of Monroe H.S. (Albany, Ga.) who signed with SMU over the likes of Georgia Tech, Clemson and Georgia before transferring to South Alabama after his freshman year. Since then he’s had a history of torching major-conference opponents: Bennett (20.1 ppg, 5.9 rpg) gave Mississippi State 39 points, 8 boards and 3 steals back in December, after putting 28 points, 5 boards and 2 steals on Ole Miss the previous month. Vanderbilt also saw Bennett go off for 25 points and 8 rebounds in late-November. Nine times this season Bennett hit four of more three-pointers in a game. Mid-major heavyweight Butler, South Alabama’s first-round matchup, should be on upset watch.

9. Malik Hairston, SG/SF, Oregon
Hairston isn’t even supposed to be here. The Detroit product was a super-hyped high school All-American who was expected to only do a year — two tops — in college before moving on to become a Lottery pick. But after Malik’s first two “I’m coming back to school” press conferences, it became clear that he wasn’t living up to his billing. Now the 6-6 senior is down to his last chance to impress the scouts enough to even get drafted. Hairston has put up 16.1 points and 4.8 rebounds this year, but once again (as has been his norm at UO) he is underachieving given his talent. In addition to the 10 games this year where Hairston scored 20-plus points, he was also held to single digits six times.