It wasn’t the unmitigated disaster of a week prior. It didn’t leave Jay Pandolfo angrier than he’d almost ever been. It wasn’t an embarrassing performance that could be labeled as losing hockey. But ultimately, clearing the low bar of last week’s 8-4 loss to UConn was all the progress the Boston University men’s hockey team made at Maine on Friday night.

The No. 5 Terriers, for the third week in a row, though it feels much longer, dropped their series opener against a quality opponent mostly because of their own deficiencies. And though BU was far more competitive at Alfond Arena than it was in the loss to the Huskies or the prior loss to Michigan State, Pandolfo’s group — once again — beat itself.

BU took four separate leads, only to squander all four in a 5-4 overtime loss to the No. 12 Black Bears.

“Every time we got a lead,” Pandolfo said, “we gave it right back.”

Maine’s second equalizer, early in the second period, was simply an excellent net-front play by junior Sully Scholle, one that BU should rightfully tip its cap to. The other three? The Terriers only have themselves to blame. Early in the first period, right after sophomore Cole Hutson gave BU the lead on an open wrister from the circle, sophomore goalie Mikhail Yegorov put a rebound right down Main Street and into the waiting stick of Black Bear freshman Justin Poirier, who calmly slotted a wrister midway through the first, just seven seconds after Hutson’s goal. Midway through the second and leading 3-2, BU couldn’t get enough defenders back in transition, and Maine senior Owen Fowler was left wide open in the right circle for an easy goal. 

And when the Terriers (3-4-1, 1-2 HE) eventually took a 4-3 third-period lead on Sascha Boumedienne’s second goal of the season, they proceeded to surrender the equalizer when BU’s defense collectively failed to read a ricocheted puck off the wall behind Yegorov’s goal and Poirier easily tapped it in.

“The details just aren’t there right now with our group,” Pandolfo said.

He came away thinking BU still committed too many turnovers. He said the Terriers struggled to work back to their own net and to pick up Black Bears at the back door. He chalked Fowler’s goal up to “just losing three guys on the rush.” All of it led to Pandolfo concluding the Terriers simply lacked the desire to keep the puck out of their own net.

And truth be told — if Yegorov (30 saves) didn’t play an excellent game after his early mistake, Maine easily could’ve run up the score just like UConn did.

Pandolfo also once again thought BU didn’t play a simple and direct enough game, which is becoming such a consistent theme on Fridays that he probably didn’t even need to mention it. He’d said midweek the Terriers would need to break out cleanly against Maine’s suffocating forecheck — and the plan to do that was to “play north,” but Pandolfo said there were too many times BU was hesitant to do it when it shouldn’t have been.

Finally — and this is not for nothing — Pandolfo wasn’t pleased with BU’s overall physicality.

“We had too many passengers tonight from that standpoint,” he said. “I don’t think we’re stiff enough as a team.”

Maine (4-2-1, 1-0 HE) outshot BU, 35-28, and, despite falling behind four separate times, outplayed Pandolfo’s team for most of the 60 minutes. BU’s fourth-year coach was able to acknowledge a couple bright spots, including the Terriers’ penalty kill — which was five for five and is at 87 percent on the year — and their bottom six. The third line of Jack Murtagh, Brandon Svoboda and Ben Merrill provided arguably BU’s best moment of the night, when an impressive forecheck led to Murtagh dumping the puck to an open Merrill, who backhanded his first collegiate goal into the roof of the net in the second period. The fourth line of Mick Frechette, Jonathan Morello and John McNelis provided energy all night.

Freshman Ryder Ritchie, playing on the top line, dazzled as well, notably on an outrageous power-play goal midway through the first, when the second-round Minnesota Wild draft pick received the puck below the circle with his back to the net but flicked a no-look backhander behind an unsuspecting Albin Boija for his third BU goal.

Outside of those things, though, BU’s performance was rough. The Terriers were deservedly beaten, even though they had over three minutes of a man-advantage — 42 seconds of it at 5-on-3 — late in the third to score the regulation winner.

“You gotta find a way to score a goal,” Pandolfo said of that power play.

Had the Terriers found one, they would’ve headed into Saturday night’s series finale looking to build instead of respond. But they didn’t. They didn’t do plenty of things on Friday, and now they find themselves back where they always seem to be.