Did you try quitting everything, rebooting the iPad and the Mac and then starti all over again? If you didn't try that, that's always the first thing that I do when my iPads and iTunes on my Mac don't want to play nice together. Most of the time, that's all that I need to do to resolve the issue. I would also try another cable, if you have one, and/or another USB port on the Mac.
If that doesn't work, you might have a corrupt backup, or a corrupt app or document causing problems. Close all of the apps on the iPad, force restart and then try again.
Close all apps. Press the Home button two times quickly. You'll see small previews of your recently used apps. Swipe left to find the app you want to close. Swipe up on the app's preview to close it.
Now force restart the device. To force restart the device, press and hold both the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo.
IF that fails, see if you have multiple backups in iTunes. Launch iTunes - no need to connect the iPad to do this - and go to iTunes>Preferences>Devices. You will see all of your iOS backups if you have multiple backups, you might want to delete the oldest one and then try syncing again.