MILWAUKEE -- In the red-eyed Pitt locker room, the presumptive options were revealed without any self-consciousness, much less any irony.

So let us pretend that the Panthers' season ended with Sunday's final shot against Xavier, just as Pitt pretended it had real, viable options with four-tenths of a second left and the Musketeers leading by three.

"We had Ashton [Gibbs] coming off two screens," said senior Jermaine Dixon, whose eyes were the reddest. "Brad [Wanamaker] was the second option, and he had a good look."

Wanamaker's shot from the extreme left wing as the clock expired fell short of the rim, not by much, but at the same time, by about from here to Salt Lake City.

The first reality of this second-round exit from the NCAA tournament is that Pitt lost to Xavier in the first half Sunday, when its usually reliable defense somehow allowed a 16-0 run that excavated a 13-point hole from which the Panthers could not extract themselves, despite an hour and a half of clawing and climbing, falling and rising.

The greater reality is that Jamie Dixon somehow got 25 wins out of a team with no reliable scorers. Gibbs and Wanamaker were options in name only in the final seconds, and both missed makeable shots that would have sent it to overtime.

If Levance Fields takes either of those shots, they go in.

Of course, Levance Fields doesn't live here any more. Inconsistency lives here. And Pitt's skittish, unpredictable offense got displayed in the Bradley Center in all of its maddening, inglorious dimensions.

Gibbs, the first "option," came into the game having made three of his previous 11 shots. But he came to fire.

He scored 18 points in the first half. Then, one in the second, missing four times from 3-point range.

"My teammates did a good job of finding me in open spots," Gibbs said nobly. "It was my job to knock down the open shots and it was something I didn't do in the second half."

Gilbert Brown, due for a dud of a game in his fascinating, metronomic good game-bad game-good game-bad game rhythm, had no points at the half, but wound up with 14 when he nailed three 3s in the game's final two minutes.

Jermaine Dixon, who chipped in 13 points in a first-round victory against Oakland, shot 1 for 9 Sunday, but never lost his willingness to try any kind of goofy shot.

Gary McGhee, who flipped home 12 points Friday against 6-foot-11 Oakland stud Keith Benson, did not score.

By the time Pitt scratched back to trail by a manageable seven at the half, 35-28, Nasir Robinson, Wanamaker, Dixon and Brown were a combined 3 for 15.

"We have a lot to learn from this game right here," said Brown, who fouled out in the final seconds, so he wasn't an option either. "I thought this team was capable of making a national championship run. You saw what happened to Kansas. I think we could have done it."

Well, that's one of us.

When your offense is this unreliable, a first-weekend ejection sometimes has to be the limit of your aspirations.

"Our guys are really suffering right now," said Jamie Dixon, who missed by a couple of buckets of having more wins in his first seven seasons than any Division I coach ever. "When you lose these close ones it's gonna sting; it's gonna hurt. I think we did all the things we wanted to do. We wanted to outrebound them and we did by nine. We wanted to cut down the turnovers and we had only nine. But they got to the free-throw line more than we did and that's the one thing that we wanted to do that we didn't do."

Other than, you know, something he mentioned the other day: Putting the ball in the basket.

For long stretches of the second half, particularly when the Panthers generated their own 12-0 run to get within a point at 50-49, the only Panther who had any offensive idea was Wanamaker, who had 11 points post-intermission and refused to let Pitt fall completely out of it.

Had his last-second shot somehow gone in, Wanamaker would have gotten some justice.

"I got it off in time," he said. "Coach designed a good play. I thought it was good when it left my hand, it just came up short. Ash got a good look, I got a good look. The shots just didn't go in."

For all that, Pitt might still have escaped to Utah had it done a better job on Xavier's Jordan Crawford, whose first points didn't come until the 13th minute, but his three-point play put Xavier ahead for the first time, 19-18, and the spectacular 6-4 shooting guard went on to stroke a game-high 27 points on 9-for-15 shooting. In two tournament games, he has 55 points.

When the hurt and the sting and the redness in their eyes go away, Pitt's young players will realize that winning 25 times despite crippling inexperience and no real offensive options is a pretty commendable overachievement.

"I'm definitely proud of the way we played this year," said Jermaine Dixon, the only departing senior starter. "Proud of the way we fought, and proud of what we accomplished."

They should all feel that way; it's the one truly viable option.

Gene Collier's "Two-Minute Warning" videos are featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.