ESPN.
In a scene that was hazardous to Duke’s players and embarrassing for Wake Forest as a whole, fans stormed the court after the Demon Deacons recorded an historic win over the No. 8 Blue Devils, injuring Duke star Kyle Filipowski in the process.
Filipowski suffered a leg injury after a fan ran into him in an action that the Duke player believes was personal.
In a statement shared by NCAA reporter Andy Katz, Wake Forest Director of Athletics John Currie apologized on behalf of the school and said that he called Duke’s athletic director and the ACC’s associate commissioner to apologize to them as well. He pledged that the program would do better moving forward to prevent things like that from happening in the future.
“On behalf of Wake Forest, we sincerely regret the unfortunate on-court incident following this afternoon’s men’s basketball game and hope the involved Duke student-athlete is doing better. I called Duke Vice President and Director of Athletics Nina King and ACC Senior Associate Commissioner Paul Brazeau immediately after the game and expressed our sincere regret for the situation and our concern for the Duke student-athlete’s well-being. Although our event management staff and security had rehearsed postgame procedures to protect the visiting team and officials, we clearly must do better. I appreciate the postgame comments of Duke Head Coach Jon Scheyer and I am in complete agreement that something more must be done about the national phenomenon of court and field storming and Wake Forest looks forward to being a part of those conversations.”
There have been many calls for college sports teams to put added security measures in place to stop fans from court storming after basketball games or field storming after football games.
But aside from placing stiff fines on the offending schools, teams seem reluctant to take the strictest possible actions.
Unfortunately, it might take downright draconian punishments to truly rid the sports world of the practice.