Sadness Is Part of March Mix Too

This weekend of nonstop basketball served as a cautionary tale, a reminder that while we watch the NCAA tournament to see David and Goliath, sometimes we get Romeo and Juliet, with heartbreak all around.

There were some excruciating defeats in the conference tournaments. And even the big winner -- top-ranked Illinois, champion of the Big Ten, holder of a No. 1 seeding in the NCAA tournament -- has a coach awash in sorrow after Bruce Weber’s mother passed away Friday.

Even if the Illini go ahead and win the whole thing -- and count me among those who think they can -- I’m sure Weber will shed some more tears because his mother won’t be around to see it.

Until the final game comes, whenever that is, this is the easy part for Weber. He has to worry about the next practice and the next game, the needs of his players and those orange-clad loyalists outweighing his own. But when it’s over, win or lose, he’ll have downtime to be on his own ... and that’s when her loss will be most deeply felt.

His team made it through the initial shock. It also won the final two games of the Big Ten tournament despite spark plug Dee Brown’s shooting two for 12 in the semifinal against Minnesota and going scoreless in the final against Wisconsin on Sunday.

In a field that lacks one dominant entry, it comes down to whose flaws bother you the least. That’s why Illinois is my pick. The Illini don’t have one strong inside player, but James Augustine and Roger Powell find a way to grab rebounds and alter shots. And because they are so deep at guard, the strength of the team, they can weather an off night by one or two among the trio of Brown, Luther Head and Deron Williams.

Meanwhile, we all could use a bye week to recharge after this draining marathon of conference tournaments.

I wish more people could have seen the heart Cal State Northridge’s Ian Boylan showed against Pacific on Friday night, and the tears running down his face after the Matadors lost. That’s passion.

On the other hand, I can’t take another look at Darius Washington. By Saturday night I had to turn away from the television every time they showed replays of Memphis’ talented freshman guard missing two of the three free throws that could have beaten Louisville at the end of regulation in the Conference USA championship.

After the final free throw bounced off the rim, Washington cracked a brief smile, then pulled his jersey over his head and fell to the floor. Coach John Calipari and one of Washington’s teammates struggled to lift him up -- both his body and his spirits.

It was a reminder that every great March moment has its downside. Michael Jordan’s textbook-form jumper in 1982 led to John Thompson’s consoling errant passer Fred Brown.

In Connecticut’s last-second victory over Clemson in 1990, Tate George’s jump shot from the corner led to that bewildered look on Elden Campbell’s face.

And the 1993 championship is remembered more for Chris Webber’s timeout that sealed Michigan’s fate than anything North Carolina did to win it.

More thoughts from Bracket Sunday, while wondering how Mike Krzyzewski got a 30-second national recruiting pitch passed off as a credit card commercial:

* Props to the tournament selection committee for realizing there’s good basketball west of the Mississippi and giving a No. 1 seeding to Washington. The Huskies won the second-ranked conference (according to the RPI) and deserved it more than some third-place team elsewhere. That said, I don’t think the West will do well in the tournament. In the Albuquerque bracket, I think Texas Tech will knock off UCLA and Gonzaga, and Georgia Tech will emerge from the regional.

* The Yellow Jackets are regaining last year’s Final Four form at just the right time. Arizona got a bad seeding and will be in trouble against Oklahoma State.

* Duke doesn’t have depth, doesn’t have the old talent level, but keeps winning. Krzyzewski must be a pretty good coach. But Syracuse will squeeze every ounce of experience from the four remaining members of the 2003 championship team to beat the Blue Devils and win the Austin regional.

* The Syracuse regional is loaded. Kansas looked like a No. 1-seeded team for much of the season, and it showed up here as a No. 3. A potential regional final against former Jayhawk coach Roy Williams and North Carolina (the No. 1 seeded-team in the region) has me hyped -- and probably has Williams bubbling in tears already. I pick Carolina to emerge from the regional that also includes Connecticut and hot-hot-hot Florida.

* North Carolina has the talent, which will be enough to get the Tar Heels to the championship. But they’ve been scraping by recently, from the last-second victory at Duke to a late comeback against Clemson. What I didn’t like about them at the ACC tournament this weekend was that no one other than Raymond Felton and Sean May stepped forward to lead them.

* You can’t always count on the usual suspects. What makes the NCAA tournament special is the no-names popping into the national consciousness. The spotlight doesn’t search for the stars, it stumbles across them.

And sometimes the stars leave tragic figures in their wake.

Illinois has both. That’s enough to make the Illini my practical and sentimental pick in a tournament where no one has it all.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/Adande.