George Mason’s season ended Thursday the way too many seasons like this tend to end. With disappointment, frustration and a lot of questions nobody really wanted to be asking again.

What looked at one point like a promising year turned into something else entirely. It had a great beginning, a bad middle, and a horrible ending.

The Patriots dropped six of their last nine games, and the latest one was the toughest yet, a 73-67 loss to St. Bonaventure in the Atlantic 10 Tournament in Pittsburgh. Mason had the game in its hands. It had a 10-point lead at halftime, pushed it to 11 early in the second half, and looked ready to move on.

Then everything fell apart.

The offense dried up, the turnovers came at the worst possible times, and St. Bonaventure did what good teams do when they see a team starting to crack. It pounced. The Bonnies closed the game on a 13-2 run over the final 6:24, and with that Mason’s A-10 run was over almost as quickly as it had begun.

That is what makes this one hurt.

This was not a game where Mason got run out of the building. This was a game it controlled for a half and then gave away. The Patriots defended well early, played with poise, got big shots from Jahari Long and looked like the more complete team. Long finished with 17 points. Riley Allenspach had 12 points and 10 rebounds. Kory Mincy added 12 points.

But in the end none of that mattered because Mason could not finish.

And now comes the bigger issue.

Where does this program go from here?

That is the question hanging over everything now as the Patriots head into the offseason. Mason finished 23-9, which on paper looks strong. There were good wins in there. There were stretches where this team looked like it was building toward something meaningful.

But in the end the same hard truth remains. The NCAA Tournament drought is now 15 years.

Fifteen years.

At some point that stops being bad luck, bad timing or a rough break here and there. At some point it becomes what the program is.

So now the questions get louder. Will George Mason continue to be a middle of the pack A-10 team? Can it really compete at this level with programs like VCU, Dayton and Saint Louis, teams that seem to know how to stay in the fight year after year? Can it take the next step, or is this more or less the ceiling?

Right now that answer is up in the air.

There is still a chance the Patriots get an NIT bid, and if that happens they will have more basketball to play. But the bigger picture will not change much. This season had an opportunity to become something more, and instead it ended with the same unsettled feeling that has followed this program for far too long.

For Mason fans that is the hardest part.

Not just that the season ended.

It is how familiar it all feels.