As good as the freshman are in this year’s NCAA Tournament, we’re not going to see a repeat of what Carmelo Anthony did last year, when he carried Syracuse to that school’s first national championship and then went to the NBA to try to do the same for Denver.

That isn’t a knock on any of the super freshman in this year’s tournament. The reason Anthony became the celebrity he did last year — and the third player taken in the NBA draft — was because his accomplishments were so rare.

In his only year of college ball, Anthony averaged 22.2 points and 10 rebounds. There aren’t that many pros who average a double-double. To do it in college, where games are eight minutes shorter than in the NBA and the shot clock allows 11 more seconds between shots, is truly remarkable. To do it as a freshman is unheard of.

Freshmen are often integral and important pieces of championship teams. But freshmen who single-handedly win championships come around as often as George Steinbrenner lets staff blunders slide by without comment. Just because it happens once, don’t expect it to happen again.

But if we’re not likely to see another Anthony for a while, this year’s tournament has its share of freshmen who can make a big difference in deciding the fates of their teams. Five in particular could turn out to be vital cogs in championship runs. They are, in no particular order, ACC sensations Luol Deng of Duke and Chris Paul of Wake Forest, Big East super frosh Chris Taft of Pitt and Charlie Villanueva of UConn, and Arizona’s Mustafa Shakur.

Together, the five could put on a championship run of their own. Let the 6-foot Paul and 6-3 Shakur share the guard positions, put the 6-11 Villanueva at big forward, the 6-8 Deng at small forward, and the 6-10, 250-pound Taft at center and you’d have to like your chances of going deep in the brackets.

Separately, they’ve already been vital to the success of the schools that all will almost surely leave before their senior years.

Of the five, the most like Anthony is Deng, who is the same size at 6-8, 220 pounds, and has the same sort of all-court skills, having played every position in high school. And maybe if he weren’t playing for Duke, a team larded with talent, Deng would be doing what Anthony did at Syracuse.

But Deng isn’t the whole team in Durham, because he doesn’t have to be. At Syracuse, if ’Melo didn’t do it, it didn’t get done. At Duke, Deng doesn’t have to be the leader. That role is filled by Chris Duhon. He doesn’t have to be the leading scorer, because that’s J.J. Redick’s job. And Sheldon Williams is in charge of the boards. Deng just has to contribute.

It’s the same in Arizona, where Shakur just needs to be the point guard, not the whole team. Hassan Adams, Channing Frye and Salim Stoudamire combine for nearly 50 points per game, and the rest of the players chip in another 27 among them. All Shakur has to do is bring the ball up the court, distribute it, hit the open jumper, and play defense.

At Wake, Paul is a bigger piece of the machine, both running the offense and carrying the second-highest scoring average after Justin Gray.

Similarly, at Pitt, Taft, a remarkably agile and skilled big man, has Jaron Brown, Carl Krauser, and Julius Page to share the load.

And at UConn, Villanueva, who almost went into the NBA out of high school, isn’t even a regular starter, but the first man off the bench. With Emeka Okafor, a candidate for player of the year, in the post, Villanueva doesn’t have to dominate. He just needs to contribute.

But it’s tournament time now, and all the freshmen will have to step up. Sooner or later, the time will come for one or more of them to be a hero.

Most of them have already shown what they can do when called on. With Okafor out with a sore back in the Big East tournament, Villanueva ripped down 13 boards against Notre Dame to help his team advance to the semifinals.

In Duke’s ACC tournament final loss to Maryland, Deng stepped up and had 16 rebounds.

Out West, Shakur drove the court with time running out in a tie game against USC and drained the game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer. Had Arizona not won that first-round game, there was a fair chance the Wildcats wouldn’t have made the NCAA tournament.

They’ve given hints of what they can do in a big moment and a big game. Now, with every game bigger than any they’ve ever played in, they’ll be asked to do it every night.

They won’t carry their teams for six games, as Anthony did. But given the teams they’re playing for, the odds are good that one of them will be where the Syracuse star was last year — celebrating a championship at center court.

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