About an hour before Colorado headed to Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis, they received the news that there had been a shooting, which took multiple lives Monday afternoon, at the King Soopers two miles from CU’s campus and only 1.2 miles from Folsom Field. 

“I’m very familiar with it. That’s a grocery store a lot of people go to. It’s probably five minutes from my house,” senior guard McKinley Wright IV said. “It’s just so sad and devastating that happened.” 

With the shooting on Wright’s and likely most of the CU’s player’s minds, Colorado’s season came to an end Monday night, falling to Florida State 71-53. Colorado finished the season 23-9, its best winning percentage (.720) since 1969 (.750) when the Buffaloes previously made the Sweet 16. 

After the game, coach Tad Boyle said he decided not to discuss the shooting with his players, but it was brought up in the locker room following the game in what Boyle described as an emotional moment.

“It puts basketball in its proper place,” Boyle said. “Win or lose tonight, I felt an emptiness in my stomach. Another senseless act of violence we’ve experienced in this country many, many times. It puts this game in perspective.”

Boyle added that the tragic events weren’t an excuse for the way the Buffaloes played Monday, in what was one of their worst shooting performances of the year.

Coming off its best 3-point shooting game of the season on Saturday against Georgetown, in which the Buffaloes hit 16 3s, Colorado went cold Monday, going 4 of 16 from beyond the arc and shooting 35.7 percent from the field. Freshman forward Jabari Walker, who scored 24 points Saturday, went scoreless, while Sand Creek High School product and senior forward D’Shawn Schwartz, who made five 3s against Georgetown, led the Buffaloes in scoring with 13 points.

Wright struggled most of all, after his 13-assist game on Saturday, finishing Monday with 10 points, one assist and five turnovers. 

“It 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.” 

Wright will go down as one of the greatest players in Colorado history, leaving the program as the all-time assist leader and sixth in total points in his career. And as the clock ticked away on his time at Colorado, Wright embraced in a tearful hug Boyle for one final moment. 

“I told him I loved him,” Boyle said. “That kid’s special. What he’s been through to get to the University of Colorado and what he’s given to this program over the last four years — the player’s supposed to be crying not the coach, but their were tears in my eyes like there are now.”

And after the game, despite a bitter and emotional goodbye, Wright maybe offered the best wisdom he has in his four years at Colorado. 

“It’s a privilege to play this game, but we have to realize that life outside of basketball is real,” Wright said. “People lost their lives today. That sucks. It’s hard to put that in words, coming off playing my last game here at CU. 

“Life is so much bigger than basketball. Basketball — it’s just a game.”