The Georgetown Hoyas may have lost 75-70 to the Kansas Jayhawks last night, but the team garnered headlines before the game started for wearing matching t-shirts that pay tribute to Eric Garner.

Prior to tip-off, all Georgetown players were wearing matching “I Can’t Breathe” shirts while warming up. “There were a variety of reasons why we wanted to wear the shirts,” D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera, a guard for the team told ESPN. “There were quite a few families that lost their loved ones this year: Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin … we wanted to represent those families that all lost. It wasn’t just for this one scenario for a lot of people who know just this one case, I just think we wanted to represent the families and send our condolences that way.”

Garner was killed by a Staten Island police officer in July after an officer put him in what appeared to be a chokehold for illegally selling single, untaxed cigarettes. The incident was captured on video, along with some of Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe!” Earlier this month, a grand jury reached a decision not to indict the officer responsible for Garner’s death, fueling nationwide protests and demonstrations initially sparked by a similar decision by a grand jury over the shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Mo. police officer.

Garner’s final words “I can’t breathe,” have become one of the man chants and slogans for demonstrators across the nation rallying for police reform, but according to ESPN, the Georgetown players weren’t trying to make a statement about the justice system; they just wanted to pay respect to Garner’s family.

“We didn’t wear the shirt to say the cops were wrong, or the system was wrong,” senior Josh Smith told ESPN. “We wore the shirts just to show our condolences to the family. No matter how you look at it, we don’t know who’s right or wrong, but they still lost somebody.”

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