This week, four college basketball teams will trek to Minneapolis in search of the grandest, most-sought-after prize their sport has to offer. Merely being there, though, signifies that those squads have accomplished something hundreds aspire to, but only a select few do — reach a Final Four.

In no sport — not even in college football, with its nascent four-team playoff — is making a national semifinal revered and mythologized the way it is in college basketball. It’s a step in a journey that doubles as a destination. It’s an achievement by which programs are measured historically and specific teams are validated. Champions are remembered forever, but so too are the teams that were a win or two short.

The 2008-09 University of Pittsburgh men’s basketball team never made it to that point, coming a handful of seconds shy of doing something no Panthers squad had done in the post-World War II era. It’s one of only two Pitt teams since 1941 that has made it to the Elite Eight and it marks the last time the Panthers have made it out of the NCAA tournament’s opening weekend.

The team exists now as both a source of hope and a reminder of limitations, of how high the program can rise and how painfully short it can fall. For the overwhelming majority of its fan base, it stands as the best and most realistic chance Pitt had of reaching the pinnacle of its sport, the same pinnacle it hasn’t come close to approaching since.