During the Junkies’ Sports Page segment on Monday morning, Jason Bishop had to bring up the incident that happened over the weekend in North Carolina, where Wake Forest students stormed the court after the Demon Deacons beat Duke, and Blue Devils star Kyle Filipowski suffered a lower leg injury when he was run into by students.
“When are we going to ban court-storming?” Duke head coach Jon Scheyer asked in his post-game presser. “Like, how many times does a player have to get into something, where they get punched or they get pushed or they get taunted right in their face? It’s a dangerous thing.”
It’s ‘tradition’ but should it be stopped before something more serious happens?
“You get this discussion more and more because it does seem like there are more incidents, and it’s what do you do. I will say this: I will say this personally, I stormed a court or field once, I think Bird Stadium when Maryland had a big football win,” JP said. “From a student’s perspective, it didn't happen very often.”
“Court-storming is all the rage, especially in college hoops, because everyone has their phones out filming it,” Bish replied. “All these kids are running out with their phones and they wanna film their line to the players, and then when they get to the players, they want to film the players and put it on social media. All these kids are doing it, and they're all drunk and they're getting out there just being college kids, but it's becoming more prevalent these days because of social media.”
The guys dispute the liquid courage a little bit just because most college arenas don’t sell alcohol (although that’s never stopped them…), but it’s more about having fun after a big win.
“I don't want to see anybody get hurt, but I'm actually pro-court storming, because it is fun to do when you're a student,” EB said. “Don't run into somebody to hurt them, or trip them on purpose, don’t be a douche, but it’s kind of fun to storm a court.”
Cakes and Bish agree, the former agreeing with EB as long as no one gets hurt, but how do you solve it?
“I don't think you can solve it, to be honest. You can fine the schools up the yin-yang, but the students don't care,” Jason said. “I would think that if you really wanted to completely eliminate it, there's only a couple of ways, and this might not even work. If the conferences said if you storm the court, it's a forfeit, you're gonna lose the game, maybe? Or, if you want to threaten the students and say, if we identify you on the court, you're kicked out of school, maybe, but are you going to kick out 2,000 or 3,000 kids?”
EB thought that the first idea would also require an announcement for every game, but the latter is almost impossible.
“Everybody knows it's fun, but the players are not protected, that’s the issue,” Valdez said. “They are stupid, and that’s why Caitlin Clark and Filipowski are getting injured, because students are stupid and they're overrunning players.”
“If you run into a player and hurt a player, arrest them, throw them in jail, I don't care,” EB said. “I like court storming, but you do have to protect the players. If you hurt someone, go to jail. If they have enough security, they can hold you at bay.”
Take a listen to the entire conversation above!