He is normally the life of the party on the bench and in the game, so to see Brown that upset was a little disconcerting. It is probably to be expected that a freshman was the one taking it the hardest, though. He wasn’t here for the last three Marches — two inexplicable first-weekend losses sandwiched around a team that barely made the tournament — he only knows this pain.

The veterans were able to reflect more on a season that ended 32-7, with a share of the Big Ten regular season championship, the Big Ten tournament championship, three wins over rival Michigan, and a trip to the program’s tenth Final Four.

“Now I can,” sophomore forward Xavier Tillman said, when asked if he could appreciate the team’s accomplishments. “Before, I stayed in the moment a lot during the season so I couldn’t even look back on it, but we accomplished a lot.”

While the Spartans were ranked No. 10 to start the season, the reality of losing two lottery picks, Miles Bridges and Jaren Jackson Jr., from the 2017-18 squad was made painfully obvious in the first game of the season, a disappointing and troubling loss to Kansas in the Champions Classic. Somewhere along the way, MSU figured out a way to play without them.

Then junior guard and team captain Joshua Langford went down with a stress fracture in his left foot Dec. 29 against Northern Illinois, lost for the season. Junior forward Nick Ward missed nearly a month with a fractured left hand suffered Feb. 17 against Ohio State. Redshirt junior forward Kyle Ahrens battled back issues the entire season before suffering a severe left ankle sprain March 17 against Michigan.

Still, MSU went 16-4 in conference. Still, they made it to Minneapolis.

“They did an unbelievable job throughout this whole year, with all the ups and downs that we faced,” Langford said. “With different circumstances or situations that we had to fight through, when people probably counted us out, we all believed in each other. For us to make it this far, it speaks volumes to the type of team we have and the kind of character each guy on the team is.”

Tom Izzo said in the postgame scrum that he would be upset Saturday night, but he expected time to heal that pain.

“I bet you, a couple days from now, I’m gonna be so damn proud of this team,” he said. “Not only for what they accomplished, but how they did it, and the joy they brought. It was an incredible year for me too, just being around them.”

Freshman forward Aaron Henry, a wise-beyond-his-years guy in general, echoed a similar sentiment.

“We weren’t supposed to be here,” he said. “We weren’t supposed to win the Big Ten ... weren’t supposed to make it to the Final Four, weren’t supposed to be the team that got here. So when you look at it like that, we beat the odds multiple times. Tonight, the ball didn’t bounce our way.”

The pain of the loss — knowing how close they were, knowing how winnable Izzo’s second championship felt — stung, for sure, but this was a far cry from the absolute devastation of a year ago.

This team talked after the game like one that knew it had already done enough to hang banners.

Finally, after a three-year drought, a March to be proud of.