There are a lot more factors, but these three are certainly basics vital to winning.
It feels much better to be at NCAA's with eight teammates who have found that unity, ability to overcome, and work ethic to achieve that team goal, than to have an apathetic group of strangers.
In that extremely special environment, the individual achievements come naturally and without thought as they fight for the team.
There is an indescribable high when you are part of a victorious team, a tingling in the skin, a numbing of the brain, a general disorientation of all senses.
That feeling, those few moments of ecstasy, drive thousands of people to combine their efforts with the only certain commonality of the group being the single goal of winning.