Losing in the Elite Eight is tough, infinitely more searing than losing in the Round of 16.
It can be hard to deal with the idea that you were a tantalizing 40 minutes away from the Final Four.
"You know," says Villanova coach Jay Wright, "I've only done it once. You are crushed. You are crushed. Because when you get that far, everything is clicking, everything is - you're on such a high. Like, right now, when we go to meetings, there's not one kid turning his head sideways. He's into everything you say. It's such a thrill as a coach. Then that ends, you're crushed."
Wright has built the kind of program at Villanova that pretty much ensures a wrenching end of the season. The Wildcats have been to the NCAA Tournament five straight years, and have advanced to the Tantalizing 40 Minutes Away stage for the second time in four years, with two of the other three seasons culminating in the Sweet 16. The coach learns how to deal with the sting of defeat. He'll probably be back and back and back again. For the average player, a lifetime of playing seriously competitive basketball may very well be at an end, so a coach must know how to bring his players down gently.
"Now, for us, within a day or two, you step back," Wright explains. "We always have a team meeting a day or two later. 'Now let's look at what we did.' "
Wright now has a four-man senior class that has compiled a school-record 101 wins, as well as achieving other milestones. When the time is right, he'll go to sports information director Mike Sheridan and say, "Tell these kids what they did."
"But right now," he says, "we want to be in the moment. Two days later, we try to make them feel great about what they accomplished."
This kind of talk seems to presuppose a Villanova loss to Pittsburgh tonight, so let's stop right here. Pitt being a No. 1 seed and Villanova being a No. 3 means nothing. Villanova has won 15 of its last 18 games, and among its conquests was a 67-57 triumph over Pitt in the last college game in the Spectrum. So the Wildcats expect to be moving on to Detroit. They'd prefer to postpone the tears and the reflection, or, in the absolute Best-Case Scenario, never have to deal with them at all.
Anyway, of all the teams remaining in the tournament, Villanova has an interesting distinction: Its last three NCAA Tournament losses have come to the team that eventually cut down the nets as they play "One Shining Moment" on CBS. The Wildcats lost to North Carolina in 2005, Florida in 2006, and Kansas in 2008.
That, says Wright, has made the inevitable loss at the end of a season somewhat more palatable.
"The last three times we got knocked out, we got knocked out by the eventual national champions," he said. "So I really felt good about that in terms of our staff. I felt, 'You know what? We pushed them; they gave us everything they got. It took the national champion to beat us.' And not as an excuse, but just that, you know what, we played a great team and maybe we just weren't good enough. But we were pretty darn good. We were Sweet 16; we were Elite Eight."
If this all sounds quite rational and light-years apart from the Pat Riley "Winning or Misery" philosophy of life, perhaps it's because Wright hasn't spent his entire athletic life in the fastest lane. He knows what it's like to be at the foot of Mount Everest, looking up at the North Carolinas of the world enjoying white wine and brie after being helicoptered to the summit.
No offense, but when you've been an assistant coach at a Division 3 school (Rochester), you are confronted with coaching realities you never encounter if, say, you've played for a marquee school, then become a member of its coaching staff.
He played at Bucknell, and he's also coached at that much-discussed "midmajor" level (assistant at Drexel and seven-year head coach at Hofstra), where you can get a whiff of the true big time, but just don't allow yourself to think it's anything but an aberration.
"I've always thought about that when I hire assistant coaches," he says. "I played at Bucknell, wanting to play at Villanova, but not being good enough. That makes you appreciate every day you go through, as opposed to maybe having been a player at Villanova, and that's all you know."
Knowing the feel of being a have-not shows up in many ways.
"You respect every kid, regardless of his level," Wright says. "I know how hard I worked. I know how good I thought I was. I know how important it was to me. So I know how important everything our walk-ons do is. I never take any of this for granted. I think it really has impacted me. Like playing American [the Wildcats trailed by 14 early in the second half in this year's first-round game]. I've said it a hundred times. We explained to our guys. I had two Hofstra teams that almost beat UCLA one year, and we believed we were going to beat them. We believed we were good enough. I think it allows us to respect every team we play. I wouldn't change my path in any way."
Pittsburgh has its own issues. The Panthers needed to silence critics by getting to the Elite Eight for the first time in the Ben Howland-Jamie Dixon Era, and they have. Now they, too, are that Tantalizing 40 Minutes Away.
Jay Wright has his exit strategy in place if things go bad.
Does Jamie Dixon?
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist and host of the Globe's 10.0 on Boston.com. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com. 
