“A coward came in and shot a King Soopers.” – The Denver Post

INDIANÁPOLIS – On a night when Colorado was flooded with tears, no amount of hugging could make the pain go away.

With just over a minute to go before the 71-53 loss to the state of Florida, which eliminated the Buffaloes from the NCAA tournament, playmaker McKinley Wright IV left the court wearing a CU shirt for the last time.

Coach Tad Boyle pulled him hard, burying Wright’s face in his right shoulder. Two men whose lives in basketball have been tied up in huge victories and overwhelming defeats over the past four years have embraced each other in a brother hug that lasted 10 seconds.

“I told him that I love him. And I do. The boy is special, ”said Boyle, fighting tears. “The player must cry, not the coach”.

Basketball is a brotherhood, and the games we play can amaze us like children. But the past 12 months, marked by a pandemic, political divisions and meaningless deaths, have never given sport any real chance to make our problems go away.

On this sad Monday, a tragedy struck the street at the Buffs’ home in Boulder. Wright and his companions learned, just before the denunciation of the greatest game of their young lives, that a grocery store just two miles from the CU Event Center in Boulder had been the site of a horrible murder.

“Some coward came in and shot a King Soopers. And that sucks, ”said Wright, painfully aware of the mass shooting at home. “Life is much bigger than basketball. Basketball is just a game. People lost their lives today. “

Boyle chose not to discuss the shot with his team until after the game, because there was no way the Buffs would give up playing, and he wanted his players to focus on the task at hand. While CU warmed up on the floor of the Indiana Farmers Coliseum, however, the deadly bloodshed in Boulder weighed heavily on the trainer.

“I felt empty in my stomach,” said Boyle.

The state fairground is firmly planted on the old north side of Indianapolis, and the yellow brick barn where the Buffs entered the field for a round of 16 game against Florida State seems as rooted in the Midwest as a song by John Mellencamp. This gym is stingy and a little musty, but I live with the rich aromas of history in every corner and nook. Mel Daniels and the Pacers have won ABA championships in this place. In 1964, Paul McCartney and the Beatles made young fans squirm and scream with joy until the walls shook.

But in the first half, bewildered CU players made Boyle roll his eyes in disbelief and wonder where the magic of the team’s exciting victory against Georgetown went two days earlier. In a building that opened in 1939 for local farmers to show their cattle, the Buffs actually entered it.

“This loss is mine,” said Boyle, taking responsibility for the failure to prepare the Buffs for the defensive extension of the state of Florida and the relentless pressure. “I don’t blame our players at all.”

With 1.80m tall Scottie Barnes, a highly praised NBA recruiting candidate, often bothering Wright, the Buffaloes threw 31% of the field and committed 11 losses during the first 20 minutes. They were lucky to lose by only four points while running to the locker room at halftime. Boyle refused to believe that CU was distracted by Boulder’s tragic news.

When Wright suffered his third foul at the start of the second half, the Buffs were on the brink. But they showed the tough fight that Boyle praised throughout the season. When head guard D’Shawn Schwartz punctured a 3-point basket with 11 minutes, 54 seconds remaining, Colorado reduced Florida State’s lead to 36-35.

Then everything fell apart for CU, in an ugly pile of turns, clanging jumpers and a tightening grip on Wright wherever he turned. The Seminoles erased any final drama with a decisive 19-6 run. When Boyle was slapped with a technical foul while pleading for the referees’ mercy on his guard, you knew it was all over, except for the final 6:19 cry of what would have been a wonderful season.

On nights like this, when basketball doesn’t seem to count for much and nothing can stop the pain of living in a violent country, especially a UC coach and his owner who could be divided by the difference in age or color of his skin could do was hug each other with strength. Sometimes, the best that any of us can do is offer a hug to someone we love.

“He puts basketball in his place,” said Boyle, after the death toll had risen to at least 10 in Boulder, another city whose false belief that it couldn’t happen here has been violently destroyed.

“If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. We have to find a way to stop this. “