Pitt's Jeff Capel Addresses Court Storming Controversy
PITTSBURGH --While the Pitt Panthers prepared for tip off of a critical ACC matchup against Virginia Tech, the eyes of the league and the college basketball world were locked in on a mid-afternoon contest between Wake Forest and No. 8 Duke.
The four-point win for the Demon Deacons led to a wild court storming that ended with Blue Devils star Kyle Filipowski colliding with rushing students and limping off the court with what was later revealed to be an injured knee. It's sparked a referendum on court storming as celebration for an upset win in college basketball and Pitt head coach Jeff Capel gave his take this week.
"It's an unfortunate situation what happened to the players and the people that are involved in the game, on both sides. I've just seen highlights of it, clips of it," Capel said. "You'd hope, especially when you're playing certain teams, when you're playing Duke, when you're playing North Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas - those schools like that - you have to anticipate on your home court that if your team wins, there could possibly be a court storming."
Capel has plenty of experiences on the wrong end of a court storming. As an assistant at Duke for seven years, he said that, with only two exceptions (North Carolina and Pitt), every school that he could remember beating the Blue Devils on the road celebrated with a court storming. Capel remembers them as somewhat controlled in a way that the one at Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem, North Carolina this weekend was not.
"Normally, those places had security and people - they had a plan in effect to protect the players," Capel said. "I think that should be the thing. I'm not saying I'm against court storming totally, but when you have situations that just happened against Wake Forest and you saw the situation that happened earlier in the year with Caitlin Clark, it makes me lean towards that if you can't have it under control.
Clark, one of the brightest stars in all of basketball - college or professional - also collided with an Ohio State fan following a loss for her Iowa Hawkeyes on the road to the Buckeyes. There were concerns she was injured after taking the unexpected hit as well but she has not missed games since.
Duke head coach Jon Scheyer was upset during the court storming, when he saw some of his players taunted by Wake Forest students, immediately following the loss to Wake. He continued to call out what he thinks is a dangerous practice on the weekly ACC Coaches Call and implored the ACC to make changes this season.
"Players and coaches and officials are the only people who belong on a court," Scheyer said. "Something needs to be done immediately."
Scheyer said he does not yet know if Filipowski will be able to practice this week ahead of a home game against Louisville. He did not have any imaging done on the injured knee and expects an update soon.
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