ATLANTA — The coach, the tennis champion, a couple of Olympians, a handful of successful pro basketball players.

Just look at the family trees of some of the key folks in this year's Final Four and it's easy to see why they're here. Every team has at least one player whose parent made it big in sports. Every team is full of winners.

"I don't want to speak for anybody else because I didn't grow up with them, but for me personally I feel like my father taught me a lot," said Florida forward Joakim Noah, son of 1983 French Open champion Yannick Noah.

Noah's teammates, Taurean Green and Al Horford, each had fathers who played in the NBA — Sidney Green and Tito Horford.

"It helped just because I was around basketball a lot," Al Horford said.

Over at Georgetown, the names are even better known.

The dads of forward Patrick Ewing Jr., and coach John Thompson III led the Hoyas to a national title in 1984. Neither are exactly chips off the ol' block, though.

The younger Ewing is tall like his dad, but he plays out on the perimeter — a prototypical small forward with a jump shot his dad could only dream about. Thompson bears some resemblance to his dad, but he doesn't carry a towel or a grudge the way the old man did.

Remember Hoya Paranoia? You won't see it at this Final Four. JTIII patterned himself after his coach and predecessor, mild-mannered Pete Carril of Princeton, not his father.

"This is my dad's job," Thompson said of the Georgetown post. "Then I was fortunate enough to be offered the job at Princeton. That's home for me. I said at my opening news conference here, I'm one of the few people that's fortunate enough to leave home and yet still come home."

The list goes on:

n Ohio State point guard Mike Conley Jr., is the son of Mike Conley Sr., who won two Olympic track and field medals, one of them gold in the triple jump.

n UCLA guard Darren Collison's parents were sprinters — his mother, June, in the 1984 Olympics and his father, Dennis, for Guyana at the Pan American Games.

n Georgetown has another legacy player. It's Jeremiah Rivers, son of former All Star and current Celtics coach Doc Rivers.

"Being a father and being a coach at the same time, it can be a struggle," Jeremiah Rivers said. "But I think he does a real good job of it."

Almost every Final Four has its share of celebrity and athlete sightings. On Saturday, just looking across the spectrum of well-known faces in the parents' section could take a while.

Rivers said he'll be sitting near Patrick Ewing, but not to tamper with the father about his son's future in the pros. Earlier this month, Celtics general manager Danny Ainge got busted for making too much contact with Associated Press Player of the Year Kevin Durant's mom at a game.

"I'm just going as a parent to have fun and watch the game," Rivers said.