Things that matter more

So your bracket is cinders now, because March Madness has been wonderfully Mad so far.

So you're an Ohio State fan or a Purdue fan or a Virginia fan or a Texas fan, wondering what the hell happened.

So you're Oral Roberts or North Texas or Ohio U. or Abilene Christian, saying "This happened.

So you're wallowing in basketball heaven right now, brackets aside, because how do you not love a round of 64 in which three 13s beat three 4s, a 15 beat a 2 and two 11s beat two 6s?

Prime stuff. But not the best stuff that's happened so far this weekend.

The best stuff is also about basketball, sort of, but more about human beings doing human things. And not awful human things, because too many of those happen every day, but the sort of human things that make you think, if an advanced alien culture ever lighted on Earth, it might let us live.

Maybe you've tended to overlook it, what with Da Tournament playing out entirely in Indiana right now, but a Hoosier basketball tradition far more anchored in bedrock is happening simultaneously. That would be the Indiana high school tournament, now 110 years old and known as Hoosier Hysteria until 1997. And up in Elkhart, in the venerable Northside gym, something happened yesterday in the 2A semistate that was fairly wonderful.

See, top-ranked Blackhawk Christian rolled over Blackford and the marvelous Luke Brown by 27 points, but somehow Blackford managed to win anyway. Because when the Bruins came out, they were wearing warmup shirts that said this on the back: "Davidsonstrong. Because there are things in life that are just more important than basketball."

This was not a reference to anyone in the Blackford community.

This was a reference to Blackhawk Christian head coach Marc Davidson -- the opposing coach -- who is battling a rare form of lung cancer right now.

Luke Brown was his usual marvelous self in Blackford's loss, scoring 34 points in his final high school game. But before the game even tipped, his team had outdone him.

Impeccably played, Bruins. Impeccably played.