Bubble Watch: Storm in a teacup

Court storms are good, actually, plus Wake's triumph, Pac-12 oblivion, Ohio State for fun, sportswashing Cinderella and much more

Credit: ESPN

On Saturday, we watched the end of Wake Forest’s season-defining win over Duke at a bar in D.C. Truthfully, we were there with our Arsenal buddy, splitting our attentions between an incredible Gunners performance and the affair in Winston-Salem one TV over.

Maybe we were unusually distracted, then, but the now-infamous Wake Forest court storming didn’t really catch our attention. For as special as that night will be to the Wake kids who were there, for the constant college hoops viewer, such scenes are also mundane. They happen all the time. Even when it became clear Duke was ushering Kyle Filipowski out of the crowd, well, hey: That happens in a storm sometimes, too. You try to get out of there as soon as you can. You get your team over to the bench and then off the court. It might be a little hairy, but everyone is always fine.

Then we got home and saw folks still talking about Filipowski’s apparent injury, and re-running the video of him being overcome by the crowd, and then Jon Scheyer bolting toward him, and the player limping, distressed. It became clear this was going to be a thing.

On Monday, still, the conversation raged. ESPN’s Jay Bilas noted that if the universities wanted to stop court storms, they could do so by arresting all of the people who storm the floor. (Folks got very mad about this idea, understandably so, but most didn’t seem to note that Bilas adds at the end: “The universities like it, and the truth is we like it.”) Our former colleague, Seth Davis, came out staunchly against storming and suggested $500,000 fines for schools and arrests and permanent bans for fans. The responses to his tweets took on a sharply populist tone, as though a call for safety was really about viewing the unwashed masses with contempt. All of which seems a bit overwrought.

Here’s our take, as if the world needed another one:

Court storms are cool and good. We should make sure they keep happening. We should maybe just make them safer.

Seriously: Do we really want to snuff out spontaneous expressions of joy? Do we want to arrest people for celebrating their team’s huge win? Even if that were possible — even if the Wake security staff could have stopped those kids from brushing past Filipowski at lightning speed, and for whatever reason they didn’t look remotely capable of it — is this really the side we want to err on? Arresting 19-year-olds for having fun?

Court storms are incredible. They are the culture of college sports made manifest; they are spectacle; they are lifelong memories for the participants (and, yes, the winning players, too). They are Mississippi Valley State’s die-hard student fans storming the court after the program’s first win of the season, as the ecstatic student announcers scream “Oh we’re storming the court!”

They are already not obviously unsafe, given the number of them that happen every week; the argument is always that something could happen, even though it almost never seems to (though we’ll see how Filipowski’s knee heals). Statistically speaking, players are vastly more likely to get injured playing or practicing or doing a light offseason strength session (though we realize the cost-benefit is not the same).

Anyway: It shouldn’t be that difficult to find a third way that doesn’t involve hunting down every kid who steps foot on the floor as the buzzer sounds. Give the away team time to get out and count down, or rope off a little area to their tunnel by default, or whatever. Spitball it! Get out the whiteboard! No bad ideas. There are loads of smart people on college campuses. We’ve got plenty of administrative ingenuity in this country. There are other solutions available to us, surely.

College sports is rapidly shedding its traditions, rivalries and local quirks to become more anesthetized and broadly marketable to people who don’t actually care about it. It would be a shame to lose another small part of what makes it special to the people who actually do.

Let the kids storm the court. Just help them do it more safely.

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ACC

In 2022, the week before North Carolina met Duke in the Final Four, we spoke with newly retired UNC coach Roy Williams for a feature story about his appointed successor Hubert Davis. We were reminded of Williams’ comments about the growth of then-sophomore guards R.J. Davis and Caleb Love Monday night.

“It’s not going to be like the old days — kids just don’t stick around as much anymore,” Williams said. “But if Caleb and R.J. were to stick around for four years, darn right, people would talk about them being one of the best combinations of guards North Carolina has ever had.”

Love didn’t stick around for four years; after a disappointing shot-chucking junior year, he transferred to Arizona, where he has mostly excelled and occasionally relapsed for a very good Wildcats team. But Davis? Davis is playing like one of the best guards in modern program history. On Monday he had 42 of Carolina’s 75 points (on 14-of-22 shooting!) to rescue the Tar Heels from an embarrassing home loss to Miami. He has become fully actualized to the extent that Williams predicted two years ago — if not quite under the same conditions.

Locks: North Carolina, Duke, Clemson
Work to do: Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, Virginia

Wake Forest (18-9, 10-6; NET: 25, SOR: 44): The most we’ve ever seen Coach K in Jon Scheyer also came Saturday night, when Scheyer gave a postgame press conference quote about how the storming fiasco would overshadow what was supposed to be a win that would validate Wake Forest’s season. It was classic K, actually: Magnanimous, but not without reminding you how Duke is always making some other program’s season, and also delivered beneath a thin veneer of barely disguised rage. It was perfect! Loved it. It was also correct. The importance of Wake’s win has undeniably been lost in the shuffle in the days since. Bottom line: It should ultimately be what gets them in the field. It was what the Deacs had been missing all year — proof that their talent and elite predictive metrics could result in winning performances against quality competition. Now it has. That doesn’t mean they’re a lock, but their odds of being in the field come March 17 went way up.