In a quiet locker room, as his teammates slipped off shoes and socks and cut through the athletic tape on their ankles, Angel Rodriguez sat back for a moment and looked around him.
"It's hard to think about the future when you just lost a game that meant so much to you," Miami's redshirt senior point guard and emotional leader said late Thursday.
Nearby, fellow redshirt senior Sheldon McClellan added, "It's going to be hard taking this jersey off for the last time."
Over the course of the past week and a half, McClellan, Rodriguez and the Hurricanes have experienced all the highs and lows that come with the NCAA Tournament: A relatively routine opening-round win.