I drank. I swore. I muttered. Wandered (and at times staggered) aimlessly around the house. I felt completely shell-shocked. My head still has the dull throb of last night that no aspirin, acetaminophen, naproxen or ibuprofen can quite remove.

It doesn’t compare to the Elite Eight loss to Villanova, because that was a final loss. A gut-punch of immense proportions. But it was only one loss. Last night the effect felt cumulative

I don’t know what to say at this point. Four games lost by a total of 11 points. Three of them came on a shot in the final second.

It takes a toll. On the fans. On the players. Everyone.

I guess it’s best to start backwards. Tyler Ennis.

Even Gerry McNamara didn’t make me this miserable. I’m now actively rooting for him to turn pro after this year.

Pitt couldn’t let Cooney get the ball to shoot — and didn’t. Fair was defended. That left it all in Ennis’ hands.

Boeheim said the last play was designed to be a long pass to Fair, but Ennis was the second option and he made a great play.

“What can I say,” Boeheim said. “It was a great basketball game with two teams that gave everything they had out there.”

On a basic level, I disagreed with Coach Jamie Dixon’s decision to call time out after Zanna sunk two free throws with 4.4 seconds left. Cuse had no timeouts and my feeling is make Syracuse go without a chance to call a play. The defense has to react anyways, and there didn’t appear to be confusion by the Pitt players as to where to be.

That said, I can’t claim that was why Ennis was able to square up and drain a 35-footer.

But sometimes wins and losses are determined by things completely out of a coach’s control, and that was undeniably the case Wednesday when Syracuse escaped the Petersen Events Center with a 58-56 victory against Pitt thanks to Tyler Ennis’ 35-footer at the buzzer.

“You gotta be a little lucky,” Boeheim told ESPN’s Doris Burke in a postgame interview televised nationally. “That was a little lucky.”

Little bit. Of course it helps if the luck is coming against a team that seems to have very little this year.

Pitt did defend and anticipated the first choice in the play Jim Boeheim wanted to run. Ennis just made the play.

And of course the Ennis shot doesn’t matter if Pitt could have scored more in the final two minutes.

Dixon claimed his team kept attacking late, but it sure didn’t look that way. Not from here and obviously not from Boeheim’s seat.

“That’s the way they chose to play,” Boeheim said of Pitt’s kill-the-clock offense. “Duke took a shot (against Syracuse) every 15 seconds, maybe 14 seconds. … I think (Pitt) could get a shot quicker, but that’s the way they played that.”

Several late possessions devolved into Pitt passing around the perimeter until the crowd started chanting down the final 10 seconds of the shot clock. Pitt then settled mostly for horrible shots.

Part of that is a credit to the Cuse defense. They tightened it fiercely inside late in the game. There was no where to get the ball inside, and no room given to drive the lane. Not that Pitt was rushing shots most of the game, but yeah there was a definite feeling that Pitt wasn’t showing any urgency. There wasn’t the same level of activity by Pitt players without the ball in those final minutes. That meant not forcing Syracuse to move as much on defense, which made it that much harder.

Not that these scoring droughts are anything new this year. So many games with multiple minutes of no scoring. I don’t know how you fix it. Other than useless advice like “shoot better.”