(USA Today)
College Basketball is one of the greatest sports in the world. There’s a reason March Madness is one of the most-watched sporting events we have. It’s a sport of upsets, and any school can go on the road and beat a powerhouse on any given day. It’s why we love the FDU’s or the St. Peter’s of the world, teams that get into the dance as a 15 or 16 seed and make a run.
These upsets wouldn’t matter as much if students didn’t support their teams as much as they do. When big upsets (or stumpsets, as we call them) happen, the student sections of these schools typically bull rush the court in what we know as ‘court storms’. Yesterday when the final buzzer went off in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Wake Forest knocked off (8) Duke 83-79, we had a court storm.
When looking at what happened, at first glance the thought is ‘Wow these kids are fired up they just beat Duke. That’s pretty cool.’ But then you see Duke Star Kyle Filipowski being helped off the court by his teammates and coaches.
Here are two quick angles for some context:
A couple of things to unpack here. Again, at first glance it just looks like a student body that’s fired up. But there is a difference between storming the court and whatever that was. Not only were fans already on the court before the final buzzer went off, they stampeded the court without a thought of who got in their way.
One thing that shouldn’t go unnoticed in the first clip is the Duke staff member who sprinted to Filipowski before the court was being stormed. He saw everything happen before it took place and if you watch closely in the video you can see him fight through a crowd of people to get to his star. (Shoutout to you sir. Glue guy.)
The second short clip shows a bird's eye view of what happened. One kid bumped into the Duke Center and then another you can see shove him.
What are we doing here?
Don’t want to sound like the old head saying we can’t have fun but that’s egregious. Duke Head Coach Jon Scheyer took the podium postgame to say “We need to be better.” Anti-Blue Devils were quick to repost his comments saying “Classic Duke making excuses.” If my center got bumped into and had to be helped off the court, I’d be mad too.
Don’t know what needs to happen but something should. Hopefully, two bad apples don’t ruin it for everybody.
Not saying that court storms should be banned because they are an electric part of the celebration, but someone more powerful than me should say something, and it should start with banning that shover.
That turned into a bit of a rant didn’t it, how about that, back to regularly scheduled content tomorrow.
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