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PROVO — If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the faces in the BYU locker room underneath the T-Mobile Center could paint the Bible.
There was Dallin Hall, sitting by himself in the corner with a blank stare as one of the Cougars' volunteers consoled him.
Noah Waterman did the same, his 6-foot-11 frame hunched over his space. Trevin Knell tried to explain his frustrations in an interview with BYUtv.
Off in the main press area, head coach Mark Pope equally struggled to put into words the disappointment in his program after Texas Tech's resounding 81-67 win in the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals in Kansas City.
But underneath the disappointment was a spark of hope; Thursday did not mark the end of BYU's journey, and the feeling that emanated from the Cougars' locker room was not like the one that most of the same players felt following last year's West Coast Conference semifinal loss to Saint Mary's in Las Vegas.
These Cougars still have basketball to play. It may be a little or it may be a lot, but Thursday's disappointment was only a speed bump in BYU's ultimate bid to get back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three years.
Not that such a big-picture perspective helped to cool the sting in the moment.
"Being a competitor, losing sucks. No competitor likes to lose," Waterman told KSL.com. "It definitely stings, and it hurts, but we're going to just prepare this week and get ready for March Madness. A lot of people don't get to play in the postseason, and we do. This loss sucks, but now we're going to have a whole week to prepare for the Madness. We've got to move on, figure some things out, and then make some news in March."
Make no mistake, No. 25 Texas Tech thoroughly beat BYU a night before being hounded by top-ranked Houston in the league semifinals. The Red Raiders (23-10) out-shot the Cougars from 3 — what was supposed to be BYU's specialty — while also outrebounding the Cougars 42-34, and disrupting BYU's offense with six steals, forcing 10 turnovers, and allowing just 14 assists on 25 made field goals.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the Red Raiders never trailed after leading by as much as 23 early.
So the sting wasn't just the sting of a loss, but a biting deficit that never went away.
"This loss, it obviously hurts," said Jaxson Robinson, who led the Cougars with 18 points on 6-of-18 shooting off the bench, "but we have the tournament coming up, so we have to move on. We will digest the film, stuff like that, look over it, but, essentially, we've gotta move on to the next game and focus on what's ahead. We've got bigger goals, so that's what matters."
Ranked No. 20 in the latest Associated Press Top 25, the Cougars (23-10) are rated 12th in the NET, and are currently projected a No. 5 seed by both Joe Lunardi of ESPN and Jerry Palm of CBS Sports.
Unlike previous seasons in the WCC, BYU wasn't playing for a spot in the Big Dance in Kansas City. The weeklong tournament was about seeding over qualification for most of the entrants (ESPN projects nine Big 12 teams to make the field of 68).
"We just learn from it," Hall said. "We've had a couple losses this year where teams have come out and punched us in the face. That ability to flip the page and move on to the next game without any loss of energy has been super key."
BYU will spend the weekend at the Marriott Center Annex practice facility, then gather together Sunday for the live NCAA Selection Show (4 p.m. MDT, CBS).
Then it's on to game prep, to a quick scout, and the hectic travel schedule that accompanies 68 programs during arguably the most chaotic four weekends of the collegiate calendar.
The next game is always the most important one, but in this case, it's true. Everything the Cougars have done to this point has pointed toward the NCAA Tournament, from the summer trip taken to Europe, to integrating newcomers like starting big man Aly Khalifa, to returning more than most of its scoring output from a year ago.
It all comes down to the next few days.
Welcome to March.
"We've got the biggest, best part of this whole season staring us in the face," Pope said. "I think we're grateful for the extra couple days to prepare, so that's a beautiful thing. All the projections, forcing us in a spot where we don't feel a lot of stress; we just want to play as good as we can and continue to improve."
If there's any fight left in this BYU team — one with six Quad 1 victories, five more in Quad 2, and wins over the likes of San Diego State, North Carolina State, Baylor, Iowa State and Kansas — then the best can be yet to come.
"We've got to come out and hit teams first. Today we didn't do that," Waterman said after the loss to Texas Tech. "We've just got to hit first and come out with energy in the first four minutes. The first four minutes of a basketball game is really important. It really sets the tone for everything else, and any time we do that, we've been a really special team. That's something that we're going to take back while we look at the film, and also box out a little better and move on to the Big Dance."
