It stung a little.

Thousands of Jayhawk fans who gathered at Memorial Stadium Saturday for the camaraderie of watching the big game with other devotees also felt the pangs of loss together as the Kansas University men’s basketball team fell to Maryland in the national semifinals of the NCAA Tournament.

“It’s sad,” said KU junior Jamie Waters as she left the stadium. “It’s my first year here at KU, and I was really looking forward to winning a national championship. But I’m still proud of our team. There’s always next year.”

Some 8,000 fans bypassed sports bars and abandoned cozy living rooms to catch the Final Four game on the stadium’s 24-by-36-foot Megavision video board.

It was an ambience thing, said Mark Smith, a native Kansan who now lives in Los Angeles.

“I wanted to feel the spirit of seeing it here instead of in a bar,” he said. “I really wanted to get into the flavor of the event.”

Up the hill from the stadium, the KU Public Safety Office closed campus streets to vehicles and recruited extra officers from out of town in anticipation of jubilant fans flooding campus, celebrating a Jayhawk win  or angry fans grieving a Jayhawk loss.

But aside from a small band of rowdy students calling for a riot in front of Strong Hall  they were quickly disbanded by police  campus remained quiet.

About as quiet as the stadium, where, even though the team was playing thousands of miles away, fans respected their concentration and fell silent every time a Jayhawk went to the free-throw line.

A KU deficit as deep as 20 points in the second half threw a sullen silence over the crowd as well. With seven minutes to go in the game, a steady stream of spectators began filing out of the stadium.

“I wasn’t really expecting to win, but I didn’t think we’d fall behind by 20 points,” said KU freshman Dan Hearshman. “They made one hell of a comeback, though.”

Still, thousands of Jayhawk faithful toughed out the bleak game outlook. In the end, KU came up short. But Dawn Fox, a 1997 KU graduate who drove down from Omaha to watch the game at the stadium, said it was worth the journey.

“I couldn’t think of a better place to watch the game.”