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No Sweet 16 for the Colorado Buffaloes

Henry Chisholm

March 23, 2021

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Colorado’s 2020-21 season is in the books.

The Buffaloes dropped their final game of the season against the Florida State Seminoles Monday night with a trip to the Sweet 16 on the line. It was an ugly affair from start to finish, as Colorado lost 71-53.

But the story on Monday wasn’t the basketball game, as much as it was a shooting at a grocery store in Boulder that left 10 people dead. The shooting began before 3 p.m. Monday and the first police press conference to discuss the shooting was scheduled for 5:45 p.m., the same time as the basketball game tipped off. Some details, including the number of victims, weren’t available until after the game.

“I’m just hurt and devastated for those families who have to experience this,” star point guard McKinley Wright IV said after the game. “It sucks. It was on my mind a little bit. I thought about my life and growing up and what I’ve been through and seeing these people. And what they have to go through now, it sucks. I’m so sorry and I’m going to pray for their families.”

Head coach Tad Boyle said that he first started hearing reports of the shooting a couple of hours before tipoff but that he and his staff decided not to discuss the shooting with the team.

“We didn’t have any details,” Boyle said. “There wasn’t anything really to talk about.”

While Boyle will be the last person to make excuses for his team’s performance, there’s no question that the team was presented with additional challenges on Monday.

Regardless, Colorado couldn’t handle Florida State.

The Seminoles only held a four-point lead at halftime, but they’d held Colorado to just 20 points. Colorado pulled within one point with 12 minutes left but Florida State figured out CU’s defense while the Buffs continued to come up empty and ultimately won 71-53.

“You can simulate certain things preparing for Florida State, but you cannot simulate their length,” Boyle said. “They are very long and very athletic. We knew they were going to pressure us.”

Boyle puts plenty of the blame on himself.

“I did a bad job preparing our team for the pressure that was coming,” he said. “We’ve faced pressure before, and we’ve faced switching defenses before and we’ve handled it better before. We didn’t handle it very well tonight.”

The game was the final outing as a Buffalo for Wright, who only played 29 minutes because of foul trouble. He finished 4-of-12 from the field for 10 points to go with four rebounds and an assist.

“Man, this hurts,” Wright said. “I’m trying to hold back my tears again right now. I gave this university everything I had for four years, man. I tried my best to win as many games as possible. That’s all I care about is winning. I don’t care about stats. You know, my recruiting class, we didn’t care about stats. We just wanted to come in and win, and we created that bond, that love for each other.”

It was an emotional end to an emotional day.

“We just lost the season we had, which was such a special season with such special young men in that locker room, seven unbelievable seniors, the most connected and one of the closest groups I’ve ever coached,” Boyle said. We’ll get through this and get through it together.”

Basketball isn’t what’s on Boyle’s mind, though.

“But right now my heart goes out to the Boulder community and more than just our basketball team,” Boyle said. “The perspective that this will bring to their lives, you know, is something that we’re going to have to talk about as we process this and we move through it over the coming days.”