Colorado men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle opened his NCAA tournament press conference Monday night, addressing the mass shootings just a few miles from the Boulder school campus, saying the tragedy left “a void. In the stomach, win or lose.
“First of all, before we talked about this game of basketball, I thought about this in the locker room before the game, about how the events that took place in Boulder, Colorado, today – and I have no other details than to know it was a tragic, tragic situation, “Boyle said after losing the second round of the NCAA Buffaloes 71-53 tournament in Florida State.” Put basketball in the right place.
“And I win or lose tonight, I just felt an emptiness in my stomach. Another senseless act of violence that I have experienced as a country many times. Therefore, put this game in perspective. It certainly puts the loss in perspective.
“But even if we had won this game and celebrated going to Sweet 16, we would have put on a shock absorber. So my heart goes out to the families who have been affected and those who have lost their lives.”
The shootings at the King Soopers supermarket left 10 people dead on Monday, including the police officer who was the first to respond on the spot, authorities said.
Police arrested a suspect, but did not reveal his name or details of the shooting at an evening news conference.
Colorado was away from Boulder and Indianapolis for last week’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Boyle said some members of the Buffaloes received alerts on their phones about the shooting about an hour before they arrived at the arena, but said he did not talk to his team about the tragedy before it stopped.
“I talked about it with some of my assistants and I felt it would probably be better to stay – I didn’t have any details,” he said. “There was really nothing to talk about and we talked about it after the match, again, from the point of view of perspective.
“But the mentality of your team as they prepare for a game is sometimes fragile. We didn’t want to complicate their minds too much, because we had to go play the game. We weren’t going to stop playing the game. So I decided to wait until the match to approach him with them and that’s how I did it. “
Boyle said he didn’t think the shots weighed on his team’s mind during the game, but added: “I could be totally wrong and rely on that. The only thing I’m not going to do is sit here and apologize for the way I played. I will take responsibility for this. “
Guard McKinley Wright acknowledged that what had happened was on his mind.
“I thought about my life and growing up and what I went through and saw these people,” he said after scoring 10 points. “And what he has to go through now is shit. I am very sorry and I will pray for their families.
“Basketball is just a game; people have lost their lives. That sucks. It’s hard to put that into words, right now, when I played my last game here at CU and the tragedy that took place in Boulder, it’s just terrible. “
Boyle called Boulder “a safe place, as I have never felt and lived in my life.”
“So if it can happen, it can happen there, it can happen anywhere,” he said. “But we have to find a way to stop these things. I don’t know the answer, but we just have to find a way.”