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GREENSBORO — Every year, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament seems to highlight some off-the-court tragedy.

It could be a player’s mother who dies of cancer; a sick child adopted by a championship team; or a star athlete gunned down in a drive-by shooting.

This year, the spotlight of grief has cast its glare on Kevin Kuwik, a Butler University assistant coach.

Last month, Kuwik’s girlfriend, Lorin Maurer, died in the commuter plane crash in Buffalo, N.Y., that killed 50.

If you attended Butler’s NCAA tournament game Thursday against LSU played at the Greensboro Coliseum, or if you saw it on television, you might have seen Kuwik.

The Iraq war veteran was the one wearing the purple tie. That was Maurer’s favorite color.

“It wasn’t about winning or losing,” Kuwik said of his choice of neckwear. “It’s about remembering her.”

Butler didn’t win Thursday. LSU beat the Bulldogs 75-71.

After the game, Kuwik talked about the kind of loss that puts sports in perspective.

He and Maurer, 30, met last year at the Final Four.

Kuwik, 34, had never dated anyone for so long and no one had been able to get him to slow down. She made him realize that life consisted of more than work.

They saw each other when they could.

Maurer, a fundraiser for the Princeton University athletics department, would fly to Indianapolis for Butler’s games when she could and he looked forward to seeing her more often when the season ended.

In February, they had arranged to meet in Buffalo for his brother’s Valentine’s Day wedding.

He planned to meet her at the airport on Feb. 12.

As he waited, the screen at the terminal flashed that her flight had landed.

“But she never called,” Kuwik said.

At first, he heard that a small plane had crashed; later, word came that a passenger jet had gone down.

Kuwik and his brother decided to check for themselves. They drove to the crash site five miles from the airport. The plane had slammed into a house.

“All you could see was smoke,” he said. “No one survived. You can’t fathom that she’s not there.”

Immediately, the Butler community extended its support to Kuwik.

Fans observed a moment of silence at the team’s first home game. The players added a black stripe to their home jerseys in Maurer’s memory.

“It reminds you that we’re just playing games,” said Butler’s head coach, Brad Stevens. “This is small stuff compared to the big picture.”

Weddings and funerals don’t seem to mix, but for Kuwik, they became the reality.

Kuwik knew that Maurer, “a real happy, fun-loving person,” would want the wedding to go on. He served as best man.

For the funeral, he followed the same logic. He wore a purple tie.

It’s become more than a way to remember Maurer. It’s a way to cope.

“If there’s anybody who can handle (this), it’s Kevin,” said Tom Crowley, Butler’s associate athletics director. “We’re all trying to find some meaning in this tragedy.”

Now that the season has ended, Kuwik knows he won’t have his work to distract him.

“You can’t run from it,” he said. “It’s going to be painful .... I don’t think you go through something like this on your own.”

It’s the team approach.

So what about the purple ties? Will he continue the practice?

“I’ve been wearing the purple tie ever since (the funeral),” he said. “We’ll see. I’ve got about nine of them now.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com