ST. PETERSBURG – Pain doesn’t subside in a day. Not this type of pain. The Duke Blue Devils can justify all they want to dam the tears. This wasn’t just one game. It was the one to justify a season of glory. It was the one everyone will remember.

That’s probably the hardest part. Monday night’s killer classic against Connecticut will eventually become yellow and faded in the mind. But it will never completely die. Because there will undoubtedly come a time in every one of these players’ lives in which the subject shall come up: “Oh, you played for Duke in ’99? That was the team that…”

Yes.

“Oh.”

“It’s just,” forward Shane Battier said, fumbling for the right words, “it’s just sad.”

It’s sad because this team deserved a better fate. It’s sad because Duke did finish 37-2 and roll through a season and five games of the NCAA Tournament like an angry weed wacker, and it’s forever tainted. It’s sad because people outside of Storrs will remember this year of college basketball as the one in which Duke lost, not Connecticut won. This team will be earmarked alongside UNLV of 1991 as the greatest who couldn’t.

Duke will go on. It might even travel the road to Indianapolis next year. It loses only fifth-year senior Trajan Langdon and four-year bench man Taymon Domzalski for sure. Monster forward Elton Brand could be an NBA casualty. But the Devils retain point guard William Avery, forwards Battier and Chris Carrawell and swingman Corey Maggette, who could be Grant Hill or better next season. They will also have key bench players like forward Nate James and center Chris Burgess. And the class coming in? It’s considered the best in the country, with three of their four early signees being McDonald’s All-Americans, not including uncommitted prep star Carlos Boozer, who has Duke on his short list.

There is no reason to pity Duke.

Or coach Mike Krzyzewski.

The rich get better.

But what of poor Langdon? He gets to go through life denied of his one true desire, a national championship. And he gets to carry around an anvil of guilt. It wasn’t his fault. But he had the ball in the final two Duke possessions. He will remember the shot he never took instead of the seven he made en route to 25 points. His last memory of a fine career will be of sobs in St. Petersburg.

“It’s just frustrating to see a guy like Trajan Langdon not go out on top,” Carrawell said.

The rest of the blue Devils blamed themselves for not coming to Langdon’s aid in the game. They took no solace in next year, as if next year could provide any redemption for this.

“With Trajan gone,” Battier said, “it changes the chemistry of the team.”

This team had chemistry. It had it all.

Except an answer for Connecticut.

The Huskies might not be Villanova of 1985 – because the top-seeded Huskies, too, finished with only two losses – but they played the perfect game. They found a way to neutralize Elton Brand, who had 15 points and 13 rebounds but only one bucket off the post-up. They drove the ball without fear into the middle of the lane, driving a stake into the heart of the Duke defense. They played like Tropicana Field was just some playground that held 42,000 people. They got an unlikely 14 points from defensive hero Ricky Moore to compliment the unconscious Rip Hamilton. Somebody had to score other than Hamilton and quirky point guard Khalid El-Amin could only come up with 12.

“They came in very aggressively and knocked us off our feet,” Battier said.

“They broke our defense down,” Carrawell said. “No other team has broken our defense down like that and penetrated into the middle.”

No other team danced with the Devils remained the same this season.

Until Connecticut.

“It’s just frustrating,” Battier said. “It’s just frustrating to come all this way and come up short of our goal.”

It was more than frustrating. It was, as you watched Avery bury his head in Krzyzewki’s lapel and Krzyzewski gently pat his back in screaming silence, torture.

“I was just sad at that point,” Avery said. “It wasn’t the feeling that we didn’t win the game. It was the feeling that it was the last time this team will be on the court together.”

“No matter how you look at it,” Carrawell said, “people will say we didn’t win the big one. That’s OK. We won 37 games. We just didn’t win this one.”

But that is the one is they will remember. So the pain will never die.