Coach K: No more court stormings. Duke’s retired Hall of Fame coach calls for strict rules
Add Mike Krzyzewski’s voice to the chorus calling for an end to fans rushing the court to celebrate their team’s basketball wins.
“I think you ban it. Each conference says, ‘We don’t want it,’” the retired Duke coach, the NCAA’s all-time leader in men’s basketball coaching wins, said on his SiriusXM radio show “Basketball and Beyond with Coach K.”
A number of on-court incidents, including those involving Iowa women’s basketball star Caitlin Clark and Duke’s Kyle Filipowski, this season have made court storming a national conversation in college basketball circles.
Schools trumpet them, using videos and stills of celebrating students and fans on the court, to promote their programs. Footage of them is popular on social media and television broadcasts.
Yet the stampede is inherently dangerous if the opposing players and coaches are unable to safely leave the court before the onrushing fans interact with them.
“For people to say, ‘Well, that’s what college kids do,’ yeah, college kids do a lot of things,” Krzyzewski said, “and you have rules on your campus and everything to make sure that it doesn’t go nuts.”
Clark staggered off the court groggy after a Ohio State fan ran on the court and collided with her following the Buckeyes’ win over Iowa in Columbus, Ohio, last month.
Last Saturday, following Wake Forest’s 83-79 win over Duke at Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem, one fan collided with Filipowski, bruising his knee and sending him spinning into other fans. A Blue Devils player and manager helped a distressed Filipowski to the locker room.
Neither Clark nor Filipowski missed any games because of the incidents. But that doesn’t diminish the seriousness of the situations.
“How he got hit,” Krzyzewski said, “that could have been a knee injury and what if that does something to his career? You know, you have a lawsuit, too.”
Wake Forest Director of Athletics John Currie admitted that security staff didn’t do enough to protect Duke’s players and coaches. Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes also said he doesn’t like court stormings.
“I love Wake Forest, Steve Forbes,” Krzyzewski said. “I don’t blame their team or whatever, but they didn’t have the security set up. There were a couple kids running on the court with 0.7 seconds left. If you really looked at it, they could have called a technical and then your team could have lost because you ran on the court.”
Photos and video also showed Wake Forest fans confronting Duke players Jared McCain and Mark Mitchell, who both walked away from the incidents.
“He ran up to me, said some things that I don’t know that should be said,” McCain said. “I just kind of laughed it off. I’m just gonna walk off the court and be the bigger person, I guess.”
Duke coach Jon Scheyer called for a ban on court stormings immediately after the Wake Forest game and has not relented. Because of Duke’s success over the decades, fans regularly rush the court whenever the Blue Devils lose in another team’s home venue. The same is true for other traditionally strong programs such as Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas.
Admitting it would be difficult or impossible to totally prevent fans from rushing the court, Krzyzewski called for uniform rules to be in place for all NCAA men’s and women’s basketball games.
“You make sure that everyone has a security system,” Krzyzewski said. “And then you have a punishment. To me, that’s the way I would do it. But they’re still gonna happen. They won’t happen to the level. And if you have those elements, if it does happen, there’s a good chance you won’t have injury. So you have to prevent that.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2024 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Coach K: No more court stormings. Duke’s retired Hall of Fame coach calls for strict rules."