INDIANAPOLIS — On a night when Colorado was awash in tears, no amount of hugs could make the pain go away.
With a little more than a minute remaining in a 71-53 loss to Florida State that eliminated the Buffaloes from the NCAA Tournament, point guard McKinley Wright IV walked off the court wearing a CU jersey for the final time.
Coach Tad Boyle pulled him tight, burying Wright’s face in his right shoulder. Two men whose basketball lives have been knotted in big victories and crushing defeats during the past four years embraced in a bro-hug that lingered for 10 seconds.
“I told him I love him. And I do. The kid’s special,” said Boyle, fighting back tears. “The player is supposed to do the crying, not the coach.”
Basketball is a brotherhood, and the games we play can fill us with childlike wonder. But the past 12 months, marred by pandemic, political divisiveness and senseless death, has never given sports any real chance to make our troubles go away.
On this sad Monday, tragedy struck down the street from the Buffs’ home in Boulder. Wright and his teammates learned shortly before tipoff for the biggest game of their young lives that a grocery store barely two miles from the CU Events Center in Boulder had been the site of gruesome murder.
“Some coward went in and shot up a King Soopers. And that sucks,” said Wright, painfully aware of the mass shooting back home. “Life is so much bigger than basketball. Basketball is just a game. People lost their lives today.”
Boyle chose not to discuss the shooting with his team until after the game, because there was no way the Buffs could beg off playing, and he wished for his players to be focused on the task at hand. As CU warmed up on the floor of the Indiana Farmers Coliseum, however, the deadly bloodshed in Boulder weighed heavily on the coach.
“I felt an emptiness in my stomach,” Boyle said.
The state fairgrounds are firmly planted on the old northside of Indianapolis, and the yellow brick barn where the Buffs took the court for a Round of 32 game against Florida State feels as rooted in the Midwest as a John Mellencamp song. This gym is curmudgeonly and a little musty, but alive with the rich scents of history in every nook and cranny. Mel Daniels and the Pacers won ABA championships in this place. Way back in 1964, Paul McCartney and the Beatles made young fans twist and shout for joy until the walls shook.
But in the first half, discombobulated CU players caused Boyle to roll eyes in disbelief and wonder where the magic of the team’s rousing victory against Georgetown two days earlier had gone. In a building that opened back in 1939 for local farmers to show cattle, the Buffs really stepped in it.
“This loss is on me,” said Boyle, taking responsibility for failure to prepare the Buffs for Florida State’s defensive length and relentless pressure. “I don’t blame our players one bit.”
With 6-foot-9 Scottie Barnes, a highly touted NBA draft prospect, often harassing Wright, the Buffaloes shot 31% from the field and committed 11 turnovers during the opening 20 minutes. They were lucky to trail only by four points while jogging to the locker room at halftime. Boyle refused to believe CU was distracted by the tragic news form Boulder.
When Wright picked up his third foul early in the second half, the Buffs teetered on the brink. But they showed the resilient fight Boyle has praised all season. When senior guard D’Shawn Schwartz drilled a 3-point basket with 11 minutes, 54 seconds remaining in the game, Colorado had cut Florida State’s lead to 36-35.
Then it all unraveled for CU, in an ugly heap of turnovers, clanked jumpers and a vise grip tightening on Wright wherever he turned. The Seminoles erased any end-game drama with a decisive 19-6 run. When Boyle got slapped with a technical foul while begging for the refs’ mercy on his point guard, you knew it was all over but the crying in the final 6:19 of what had been an otherwise wonderful season.
On nights like these, when basketball doesn’t seem to count for much of anything and nothing can stop the hurt of living in a violent country, the most a CU coach and his point guard who could be divided by their age difference or the color of their skin could do was hold each other tight. Sometimes, the best any of us can do is offer a hug to someone we love.
“It puts basketball in its place,” said Boyle, after the death toll mounted to at least 10 in Boulder, yet another city whose false belief it can’t happen here was violently shattered.
“If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. We’ve got to figure out a way to stop this stuff.”
