PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Jay Pandolfo has talked about quality losses all season.

The head coach of the Boston University men’s hockey team can live with it, he says, if BU loses to a red hot goalie. Or because the opponent just made more plays. If the Terriers play the right way but leave with nothing to show for it. Losses are a part of sports, after all, and for as high as expectations were for BU this season, no one was asking for a 34-0-0 record.

So after yet another loss on Friday night, this one the Terriers’ 11th in 23 games, Pandolfo was asked in the bowels of Schneider Arena if this was the kind of defeat he could live with. Because, look — BU lost 4-3 to Providence, yes, but it played better in the second and third periods! Tynan Lawrence scored his first NCAA goal! Cole Eiserman got the monkey off his back after a month and a half! Look at the saves Mikhail Yegorov made!

That enough positives, coach, even in a loss?

“It’s unacceptable,” he said incredulously.

And, well yeah. Those bright spots, as legitimately meaningful as some were, can hardly erase the stench of a defeat that felt so similar to the 10 that came before it. BU didn’t compete for the entire 60 minutes. It didn’t arrive with enough urgency despite its precarious position in the NPI, which Pandolfo said Thursday his players are so aware of it doesn’t need to be brought up. And once again, the Terriers (12-11-1, 8-8-0 HE) let a breakdown in the defensive zone cost them the game.

This time it was a brutal turnover from sophomore defenseman Sascha Boumedienne, which left Yegorov (36 saves) out to dry with two minutes to go in a tied game. Friar forwards Clint Levens and Aleksi Kivioja easily capitalized to score the game-winner (and it didn’t help that BU captain Gavin McCarthy immediately took a penalty that doomed a potential late equalizer). It was another disastrous moment for the Terriers’ defensive core and another for Boumedienne, who’s disappointed after the Winnipeg Jets made him a first-round pick last June.

“This is how many times we’ve been tied late in games and we’ve given the other team a goal?” Pandolfo lamented.

It’s five. And perhaps Pandolfo could even live with that if BU had played a spirited game. Not exactly the case. In the first period, the Terriers were jumped on so bad it looked like the 6-2 loss at Quinnipiac in November, which was arguably BU’s worst defeat in four seasons under Pandolfo. PC outshot BU 15-4 and held a 27-11 advantage in total shot attempts in that frame, building a 2-0 lead off two pretty routine power-play goals. 

The Terriers were hounded in all three zones, simply not gritty or physical or urgent enough to hang with a top team. Blame Schneider’s tiny ice sheet all you want — that kind of lifelessness just can’t happen, especially in a series of this magnitude, with PC the NPI’s highest-ranked Hockey East team and BU (which entered 17th) needing to make up ground in the ranking system that decides the NCAA tournament field.

The Terriers, to their credit, woke up in the second period. Still, Providence finished with 40 shots to BU’s 18. Pandolfo’s team was just outplayed.

“We started competing, we started playing harder, started finishing, started pushing back,” Pandolfo said of the second. “That’s all it was.”

That makes BU’s deficiencies in the first, given how Pandolfo has spoken about “cheating the game” this season, ones the head coach won’t be able to accept. Providence (14-7-1, 9-3-1 HE) is obviously good. Perhaps very good, and the Friars played well Friday. But the Terriers, in the opener of perhaps their most consequential series to date, didn’t show up.

“You don’t need to bring [NPI] up, because these guys are well aware of where we’re at, well aware of the season we’ve had to this point,” Pandolfo said Thursday. “So there has to be a sense of urgency — I think our guys are young, so sometimes it takes a little bit of time to understand what that means.” 

But BU is running out of time, and you already knew that. The Terriers were running out of time a month and a half ago. BU can’t keep doing this, or it will — and this is worth repeating — miss the NCAA tournament. As for the Frozen Four, which Pandolfo has famously reached in all three seasons at BU? Forget about it.

When the final buzzer sounded Friday, Eiserman and Lawrence both skated aimlessly around Yegorov’s empty goal, each with their hands on their knees, the universal look of a player with nothing left to give. Eiserman scored two missiles directly off face-offs, one to tie the game late in the third (though he did botch three Grade A chances from open play). Lawrence tied the game earlier in the third, a beauty on a 2-on-1 which he elected to shoot himself. 

And Yegorov made all those saves, including one on a penalty shot.

None of it mattered as far as winning the game, and none of it was enough for Pandolfo to declare this oh-so-elusive quality loss. For as much as BU’s head coach insists there’s a kind of loss out there he can accept, few (if any) of the Terriers’ 11 have qualified.

Said Pandolfo of the game-losing concession: “We did it again.”

You could say that about plenty of other parts of the Terriers’ performance on Friday.