It was really over.

It had actually just happened.

Middle Tennessee had knocked off MSU, 90-81, in one of the biggest upsets in NCAA Tournament history.

Then, 15 minutes after the final buzzer sounded, those same three visibly emotional players wiped away tears and walked with their arms around each other to face the media at a post game press conference.

This is the way all their careers had come to an end -- 112 victories, a Sweet Sixteen, an Elite Eight, a Final Four and two Big Ten Tournament Championships later, they were done.

“I can’t believe what’s going on,” Costello said. “Just talking to Bryn (Forbes) and (Denzel Valentine) on the way back here, it feels like we’re in a dream right now. This isn’t real.”

It’s certainly not the ending they had hoped for.

However, MSU head basketball coach Tom Izzo said he hopes it’s not the disappointment of Friday’s loss his seniors are remembered for, but everything else they did for the MSU program and community.

“There’s three guys here that gave me every single thing they had, and I don’t care about next year,” Izzo said while choking back tears. “I don’t even care about tomorrow right now. I just care about the present and what they did for me, for us. And somehow I’ve got to make sure that in all this disappointment, that does not get lost.”

For now, MSU’s seniors are left to ponder what type of legacy they’ll leave. All season long a national championship was the end goal of this team. They wanted nothing less and felt they had a team good enough to get there.

“I’ve got a lot of emotions running through my head right now,” Valentine said. “I mean, I’m more mad and disappointed because I know what this team could accomplish. … And today it kind of fell apart. And just sucks right now because I know the capability our team had.”

For Valentine -- a player of the year candidate who views himself as the leader of the team -- the loss hit him especially hard.

“I got something that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life; that when you’re in this position and everybody’s looking at you, you’ve got to come through,” Valentine said. “I didn’t come through today and I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.”

It’s a tough loss to swallow, Izzo will admit, perhaps the toughest of his career, he said. But if it’s legacy MSU’s seniors are worried about, Izzo said this group did more for him than a lot of groups ever could.

In addition to this, Izzo said after the Friday’s game that he’s so proud of this group, he’d be proud if his own son could grow up to be like them, and it’s a group he’ll talk about and use as an example for years to come.

“They resurrected me,” Izzo said “For whatever length I coach, whatever number of years it’s going to be, I’ll owe them that. They brought the fun back into it. Not a lot of bad days at practice for the 120-some we had. Never a bad trip. Never a bad concern.

“I can look everybody in the eye and say I’ll probably never have a team like this. I’ll probably never have guys like this. But this is a special group. And that’s why there’s all the emotion.”