“It was T.A.B.,” senior guard Mia Johnson said with a laugh. “Tough, you know, you know.”

I won’t decipher the code, but it’s essentially a battle cry for what these women stand for and how they wanted their season to go — on their terms.

“It’s basically saying that we’re going to work our behinds off to be where we want to be in the end,” Johnson said. “And that was St. Louis.”

The women won’t travel to St. Louis next weekend. They’ll take a flight home to East Lansing on Sunday after a dramatic 69-68 loss to Iowa State in the Sweet 16. But they can take solace in the fact that they did work their behinds off and they have plenty to show for it.

None of the players wanted to pat themselves on the back Saturday night for a season in the books and head coach Suzy Merchant said she was so disappointed in the outcome of the game that she couldn’t look ahead to next year and had little to say about the season as a whole.

So let me say it for them: The Spartans should take both hands and pat themselves on the back for their accomplishments this year. Picked third in the preseason for the Big Ten conference, they held first place for a number of games and finished in second. An underdog in two NCAA Tournament games at home, they shocked the world and punched their ticket to the Sweet 16 in grand fashion.

And on Saturday, they were within a point of taking the next step to the Elite Eight.

Are they one of the “elite” teams in the country? Who knows. I can’t say the Spartans wouldn’t lose nine games out of 10 to No. 1-seed Duke, who they knocked off in the second round last weekend in East Lansing.

But against Iowa State, MSU was legitimately the better team. And, because of that, they hung their heads when the final buzzer sounded.

To many, MSU exceeded expectations. People would say the team’s goal of the Final Four was lofty and ambitious. But the players saw it the other way around.

“We underachieved,” Johnson said. “We have high expectations for our own team. I understand the media and everybody has perceptions of how good we are. But I don’t think our record was a reflection of how good we are as a team. We were peaking right where we want to be. Good things were happening, tonight was just an unfortunate night.”

This team showed they have some serious gusto. They don’t look at names on jerseys or numbers on brackets. They go out and hoop.

And next year, Merchant will work with a full cabinet. They’ll lose only Johnson — the emotional leader of the team during the tournament. She spilled her blood, sweat and guts on the floor in the NCAA Tournament to extend her season just another 40 minutes — and will regain sophomore guard Brittney Thomas.

But Johnson leaves the team with a stern message of parting words to a team she hopes to see achieve to the best of its ability next season:

“Let this be a lesson,” she said. “We have to finish our the end of games and carry it on to the next season and they (should) have it in the back of their minds how we feel tonight and not put ourselves in that position again.

“I wish we were still playing right now. No regrets. We gave all we had.”

Pat yourselves on the back.