As the outside criticism grew louder with each late-season loss, the Terrapins men’s basketball team refrained from panicking, even amid the fans’ desperate calls to turn talent into wins.

They filed away the critiques, perhaps noting them but not wallowing in them. A comical loss at lowly Minnesota on Feb. 18? Discouraging, but nothing the Terps couldn’t come back from.

Same with a defeat at Purdue. And at Indiana. And against Michigan State in the Big Ten Tournament.

The difference between the Terps and many college basketball teams is the Terps knew they had the talent to win a title. Each loss and turnover and surrendered offensive rebound and missed 3-pointer was just supposed to be a misstep on the way to something greater.

Then it all ended in anticlimactic fashion in front of the few fans left at KFC Yum! Center in the Sweet Sixteen against Kansas on March 24. Coach Mark Turgeon’s team slogged off the court with a 16-point loss hanging over their heads, a final painful memory from a once-charmed season.

The Terps assembled with their coaching staff for the postgame handshake. Forward Damonte Dodd, though, needed some space to himself. He walked toward the edge of the court, grabbing his shorts as his teammates worked through the line.

“I just couldn’t believe we lost. It doesn’t really hit you until it hits 0.0,” Dodd said. “You always think — I mean, even with 10 seconds left, you think, ‘Man we could come back. We could win this.’ Three seconds, you think you could come back and win. One second. When it really hits 0.0, you realize this is it. I just needed time to walk.”

Back in the locker room, as the assembled media pelted the Terps with questions about fumbled expectations and future plans, Turgeon pulled up a chair in a corner office and sat in a circle with his confidants — assistant coaches Bino Ranson and Cliff Warren and video coordinator Mark Bialkoski. None of them uttered a word.

Passing judgment on this Terps team is complicated. On one hand, the program advanced past the Round of 32 for the first time since 2003. The Terps packed Xfinity Center through the winter, created a buzz around the area and could send all five starters to the pros.

Besides, the NCAA Tournament is a crapshoot, right? No one expected No. 10-seed Syracuse to advance to the Final Four, but that’s what happened.

Sure. Go ahead, patronize the Terps, whose locker room resembled a memorial gathering after their season ended late Thursday night. Players spoke in hushed tones, sometimes pausing to hold back tears.

Draftexpress.com‘s latest mock draft has four Terps projected to be selected this year — center Diamond Stone (No. 23 overall), guard Melo Trimble (No. 35), forward Jake Layman (No. 45) and forward Robert Carter Jr. (No. 51) — that’s more than all the Final Four teams combined.

The sentiment for much of the season was when — not if — the Terps started clicking, they’d be unstoppable. They stormed to a 15-1 start even while working through some kinks.

Yet in an odd twist, the Terps didn’t get better over time like that bottle of Chardonnay residing untouched in your parents’ cellar for years.

They slowly fell apart, each loss sapping more and more of the fan base’s confidence. There always seemed to be something going awry, a new question that needed an answer.

What happened to Trimble’s jumper? Why wasn’t Layman a bigger part of the offense? Why did Stone smash Wisconsin forward Vitto Brown’s head into the floor? And, for crying out loud, how did the Terps bungle the Minnesota game?

In the end, the Terps never found the answers.

I’m not saying the season should be remembered as an embarrassment. But it could’ve been so much more.