That's the best way to describe UC Davis' pain following a heartbreaking 73-68 loss to Seattle Pacific in the NCAA Division II West Regional semifinals Friday.

Painful because the No. 4-ranked Aggies (22-6) blew a 21-point halftime lead before a crowd of 2,600 at Central Washington University's Nicholson Pavilion.

Heartbreaking because the second-seeded Aggies were eliminated by the sixth-seeded Falcons (23-7) after playing their best basketball in the first half.

"Shocked would be the best way to describe it," said Aggies senior point guard Dante Ross, who scored 15 points and had six assists.

Add stunned and dumbfounded to the list. The Falcons avenged a loss to Davis in last year's Regional Final, sending the Aggies home early.

Aggies junior center Jason Cox walked off the floor with his head down. Senior forward J.C. Timmons seemed more perplexed and unsure how to react to the Aggies' second-half meltdown.

He took a few steps toward the locker room and stopped. He later turned around and glanced back on the court. He next shook his head in disbelief before heading back to a somber Davis clubhouse to contemplate the nightmare in Ellensburg.

The events the defending national champion Aggies will forever remember from this game will be bittersweet.

At the start, the Aggies resembled a team gearing up to make another back-to-back title run. Davis frustrated SPU with a tenacious defensive effort. They held the Falcons to 35 percent shooting and catapulted to a 46-25 halftime advantage.

Davis shut down SPU's 6-foot-9, 258-pound center Chuck Carter in the key and contained the Falcons' main weapon, Jeff McBroom, along the perimeter.

Things also looked promising because the Aggies shot tremendously from the field. The Aggies hit on 17 of 36 shots in the first half that fueled a 15-5 run in the process.

After Tyler Boyd capped an amazing 20 minutes with a three-point play, the Aggies seemed destined for a victory.

Davis, however, fell apart in the second half. The Falcons held the Aggies scoreless the first four minutes and 32 seconds.

The Aggies simply could not buy a basket. They failed to capitalize on their first six possessions, setting up one of the biggest collapses in Aggies history.

Seattle Pacific, meanwhile, narrowed the gap. It opened the second half with a 10-0 run, cutting the Aggies' lead to 46-35 with 16:15 to play.

From there, the Aggies continued to struggle. The Falcons moved closer to the upset.

"I thought that if we played five strong minutes in the second half, they would have to die," said Davis junior center Jason Cox, who scored 13 of his 15 points in the first half.

"But we didn't play those five minutes. We played 20 terrible minutes, and now we're going home."

Ross tied it 68-68 when he made a 16-foot jumper with 27 seconds left. The Falcons, however, took the lead for good when Kory Leadon drilled a 17-footer from outside with four seconds to go.

Later, McBroom closed out the comeback when he stole Cox's inbound pass from Scott Darmstadt.

"It was a bad decision," Cox said. "Scott wasn't open, but I figured I could squeeze it in to him, but McBroom made a great play."

The bad play was merely a microcosm of a bad game.

"We had a 21-point halftime lead in the semifinals of a regional basketball game and lost it," he said. "That's not the way I was planning to go out."

Unfortunately, that's the way it happened.