Forward Alonzo Jamison stared blankly into his locker, occasionally burying his face into his hands and shaking his head.

Center Mark Randall walked to the corner of the room away from his teammates, then turned down numerous interview requests, wanting to be alone with his thoughts.

Forward Mike Maddox and guard Terry Brown matter-of-factly answered questions as if they had played just another game in a long, long season.

In their own way, stoic or emotional, all were dealing with the sting of Kansas' 72-65 loss to Duke Monday in the NCAA championship game at the Hoosier Dome.

The dream that dominated their lives since practice began on Oct. 15 had reached a painful conclusion.

"It hurts right now," said Jamison, who missed 9 of 10 shots and scored just two points. "I don't want to think about what happened the rest of the season. I'm just worried about what happened a few minutes ago."

The 6-foot-6 junior found no solace in the fact that the Jayhawks shocked most experts by advancing to the Final Four, then upset North Carolina in the semifinals. He wasn't interested in a consolation prize.

"Not when you think you're going to win," he said. "On a given night, we can beat Duke."

Others, however, preferred to cling to something positive, and there was plenty to savor.

After all, the Jayhawks did upset No. 2 Arkansas, No. 3 Indiana and No. 4 Carolina on their way to the title game against Duke.

"We didn't win the national championship, but we sent a lot of great teams home," reserve guard Sean Tunstall noted.

The Jayhawks' run to second place in the national tourney ended with a record of 27-8, and only three teams in school history won three more games. They also captured their first Big Eight regular-season championship since 1986, sharing the title with Oklahoma State.

"It's a year we can really be proud of, and some day we'll be able to look back and see what we accomplished," said Maddox, on of four KU seniors. "We came from nowhere and look where we ended up."

The Jayhawks, after losing four starters off a 30-5 team that was ranked first or second most of last season, didn't appear in this year's poll until late January. They finished the regular season at No. 12, despite losing three of their last six games going into NCAA play.

In other final polls announced Tuesday, KU was third behind Duke and Nevada-Las Vegas in the USA Today/CNN rankings and fifth in Jeff Sagarin's computer ratings behind UNLV, Duke, North Carolina and Arkansas.

"We came along way," point guard Adonis Jordan said. " We don't have anything to feel bad about. A lot of people didn't think we'd do as much as we did. We just took each step and kept advancing."

Ultimately, they went all the way to the championship game, where the dream finally was buried beneath a barrage of missed shots and a solid effort by the Blue Devils.

"You could tell coach was hurting for us," Tunstall said of Williams' postgame talk, "but he told us that in two or three weeks, we'll be able to go back and look at the great season we had.

"We know we had some opportunities to win this game, and we just wouldn't take it. But it's not meant to be easy.

"If it was, it wouldn't be such a big prize."

And finishing second wouldn't be so painful.