Having one of your Final Four teams knocked out in the first round of the NCAA tournament is like running a marathon and finding out after the gun fires that your shoes were tied together.Having your next Final Four team knocked out in the second round of the tournament feels a bit more like running an eighth of the marathon and then getting flattened by a renegade oil tanker.

Quite simply, after that first weekend of tournament action, the only thing more damaged than my bracket was my mangled ego.

But on Easter weekend, my two saviors came through in a big way. With the field whittled down to four, I still have my predicted championship game intact: the University of North Carolina against the University of Illinois. And when the Tarheels beat the Fighting Illini, I will celebrate the resurrection of my bracket.

There is no doubt that UNC will be the national champion this year. Illinois versus UNC in the championship game is the pick everyone shied away from in the beginning because it was just too obvious.

But since they both emerged from the melee unscathed, there is just no doubt that they will both be there in the end.

When the two best teams during the regular season come to the tournament and dominate, it reinforces the notion that they're good. But when those teams both come within a hair's breadth of elimination and make the clutch plays needed to stave off an upset, it's clear that they came to win it all.

On the biggest of stages under the brightest of lights, only star players lift their teams to championships, and UNC has two stars: center Sean May and swingman Rashad McCants.

May leads the Tarheels in scoring, but McCants was injured for a large chunk of the season and that gives him motivation to excel. They were both money in the regional final against Wisconsin; McCants had 21 points and four assists, while May scored 29 points with 12 rebounds.

One of these players will be the hero of the tournament, and junior point guard Raymond Felton is one of the guys who will make sure of it. He is averaging 6.9 assists a game, and it is because of his tremendous ball-handling that UNC can run at such a break-neck offensive pace. He is extremely adept at getting the ball into the low post for May or driving in and dishing out to McCants for the three-point shot.

The Fighting Illini are the definition of a solid basketball team, with five players averaging above 10 points a game and the best group of guards in the country.

But while they are talented, none of them are stars of the caliber of May or McCants, and that gives UNC the edge.

The Tarheels have been beaten and bruised, disgraced and dismissed, but since Easter Sunday, everything has changed.

Just two years after Roy Williams' triumphant return to his alma mater, UNC will be fully resurrected from the dust and take its place at the top of college basketball.

And along with the Tarheels' rise to glory, my bracket will emerge victorious.