SAN JOSE, Calif. — Nobody in The University of New Mexico locker room would have wished it upon Roman Martinez, but it almost seemed fitting.

The team's lone senior and undisputed leader finished up a four-year career with four stitches on a gash above his left eye, and his customary No. 30 jersey too bloody for him to wear in the second half of Saturday's 82-64 loss to Washington in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

"That's Ro," UNM head coach Steve Alford said. "We wish it wouldn't have happened. We don't want anybody getting hurt, but seeing his uniform (covered in blood) at one of those timeouts, that's the way he plays and he's been a tremendous example for our young players."

Martinez, who scored 10 points and grabbed three rebounds in 30 minutes of action in his final game, grabbed a rebound off of Washington's Matt Bryan-Amaning's missed layup with 12 minutes, 3 seconds remaining in the second half. While coming down, he "got hit with one of Will's big old elbows," referring to teammate Will Brown.

With blood gushing down his face and a timeout called, Martinez was dazed and initially walked the wrong direction toward the Washington bench before being ushered to the locker room for treatment.

It took just a few minutes to stitch him up, but it seemed much longer for the Lobos fan favorite.

"(I) tried to get back as fast as I could," Martinez said. "It felt like a long time. ... I wanted to get out on the floor again."

He did.

Of course since the No. 30 he donned for four seasons was too soaked with blood to wear on the court, Martinez closed out his Lobos career wearing No. 41, the jersey that earlier this year belonged to Matt Staff, a 6-foot-9 forward who transferred out of the program in the fall.

It didn't matter to Martinez.

"This has all meant so much to me," he said. "I just wanted to play and get out on the court with this team just for as long as I could."

He officially checked out of the game for the last time in his Lobos career at the 2:22 mark of the second half.

His teammates, if not for their own desires to win, seemed as though they let Martinez down.

"I just wish we could have sent Ro out better than we did," Darington Hobson, a junior, said. "We all went down fighting until the end, though, just like he always does."

Martinez, an academic All-American, isn't ready to hang it up just yet. He said he plans to pursue professional basketball options overseas after graduation before making any long-term career decisions.

And while the loss hurt far more than the stitches in his forehead, it still wasn't enough to wipe the trademark ear-to-ear smile off his face when he was asked to look back on his final season suiting up for the Lobos.

"This season was still storybook for me," said Martinez. "It wasn't the ending I wanted, of course, but I'll never forget how special all of this was. It stings right now, but I can't look back at my senior year and do any complaining. This has been a dream."

Contact Geoff Grammer at 986-3060 or ggrammer@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at grammerschoolblog.com.