Charlottesville, Va.-- --There are a couple of ways to handle life on the bubble. Ideally, you spend the waning moments of the regular season tweaking the ol' postseason resume - some grammatical polish here, an exaggerated accomplishment and three-syllable superlatives everywhere else.

Which makes what the Maryland men's basketball team has done especially confounding.

Essentially, the Terps have taken what was a pretty formidable resume and redacted all the highlights, underscored their weaknesses and then ran the whole thing through a paper shredder. A few times.

To: The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee

Enclosed please find what remains of our postseason hopes. In 1,000 torn pieces. Please pardon the tear stains.

With last night's 91-76 loss at Virginia, we can finally say with certainty the Terps do not belong in the NCAA tournament. They're inconsistent, have little depth, struggle against good teams and lack anything resembling a killer instinct.

And yet, perhaps most surprising, we'll continue to talk about the Terps' NCAA tournament hopes; we'll do this in part because of who they are and partly because of what college basketball this year has been.

By the time you reach the final game of the regular season, you can generally measure improvement with the naked eye. Just as easily, you can spot those holes that somehow grew into canyons. So it was in the opening minute of last night's game, when Maryland point guard Greivis Vasquez charged into the paint and fumbled away the ball. An eye blink later, Virginia was at the other end of the court, drilling a three-pointer. Uh-oh, Terps Fan thought. Here we go again.

And there we went.

For some reason, this bubble concept eludes the Terps. Generally, when you're on the doorstep of the NCAA tournament, you sense the goal is near. The past couple of weeks, even as analysts generously listed Maryland in the projected 65-team field, the Terps always felt closer to missing the tournament than making it.

And with each passing game, from Miami to Virginia last night, the Terps took their shoddy RPI figures, shook them up like Yahtzee dice, and no matter how many times they rolled, all we saw was RIP. RIP. RIP.

Now, one thing we've learned about Maryland basketball the past several years is that the Terps are predictably unpredictable. They lose games they're supposed to win. They win games they're supposed to lose. So this week in Charlotte, N.C., where the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament begins, there will be talk of the 2003-04 Maryland team, a young group that shocked most of the ACC by winning the conference tournament.

Senior James Gist said that last night was the first time that squad was referenced this year. It surely won't be the last.

Though that group showed more growth during the regular season, any team that beats top-ranked North Carolina on the road - as this season's Terps did in January - is capable of raising eyebrows over the course of three days. So it's not wise to entirely rule out a Terps run.

"We win the ACC tournament, we go to the NCAA," coach Gary Williams said. "That solves it."

Maryland could, however, still benefit from a blurry national landscape. The field of at-large teams this year is not especially good. And because the Terps also aren't especially good, their name will still be tossed around.

Realistically, there are fewer than a half-dozen vacant spots in the tournament and 12-15 bubble teams vying for them. Schools such as Oregon, Florida, Villanova, Temple, New Mexico and Dayton are doing a much better job at staking their claim.

Last night's loss won't devastate the Terps' Rating Percentage Index heading into the ACC tournament (the Terps were No. 64). But looking ahead to Charlotte, winning in the opening round Thursday night against Boston College (No. 115) would mean little. In fact, nothing short of reaching the championship game will be enough. And even then, there will be skeptics.

Because good teams tend to peak late in the year, with most bubble teams, at some point you just know. You stop dissecting numbers, comparing schedules and studying top-50 wins.

In yet another must-win game, the Terps played the final four minutes with their senior leader on the bench. On the court, Dave Neal and Jerome Burney were in charge of taking care of the middle. This was what was left of the Terps' fading postseason hopes.

The North Carolina win felt like it happened a season ago. You could hear the teeth of the paper shredder gnashing the Terps' accomplishments.

At some point, you stop watching the court and turn your eyes to the clock. A season that not long ago had so much promise has been reduced to the ticking seconds that precede an unavoidable fate.

rick.maese@baltsun.com