Kentucky’s Mitch Barnhart joins calls to curtail court-storming. ‘I’ve got some thoughts.’
Count Mitch Barnhart among those who would like to see a stricter set of penalties for schools whose fans storm the court in college basketball.
In an interview with the Herald-Leader before Kentucky’s 91-89 victory at Mississippi State on Tuesday night, the UK athletics director talked about the challenges involved with trying to curtail the practice of court-storming but also made clear that officials at the highest level of the sport need to do more to stop it.
“People talk about that it needs to be banned. It is banned,” Barnhart said. “The problem is we’re having a hard time enforcing it. And it is a challenge.”
The topic of court-storming is front and center in the college basketball world again this week following a couple of recent incidents involving two of the sport’s most high-profile players.
Last month, women’s basketball megastar Caitlin Clark had to be helped off the court by security after she was knocked to the floor by an Ohio State fan as the result of a collision following the Buckeyes’ upset win over Iowa.
Over the weekend, Duke’s Kyle Filipowski — a projected lottery pick in this year’s NBA draft and one of the top players in the men’s game — needed the assistance of teammates to get to the Blue Devils’ locker room after he was hit by Wake Forest fans storming the court to celebrate the Demon Deacons’ upset win.
Clark avoided injury, but Filipowski was still “a little bit sore” Monday, according to Duke coach Jon Scheyer, and his playing status for the team’s game Wednesday night was still not decided.
The Kentucky men’s team has been on the receiving end of two court-storming events in the past few weeks, and the Wildcats — as one of the sport’s top programs — have seen more than their share of fans rushing the floor over the years.
Of course, the UK football team has supplied big wins in recent seasons that led to its fans rushing the field, most recently following a victory over Florida during the 2021 season. Barnhart, who has been Kentucky’s AD since 2002, has seen it from both sides.
“I have been a part of many of those,” he said. “And the difference between a field-storming and a court-storming is the confined closeness, and how fast it happens. And it is a little surreal at times. And Kentucky has been on the — I guess you could call it — the receiving end of that on lots of occasions.”
A ‘ban’ on court-storming?
The back-to-back incidents involving a pair of college basketball standouts has led to renewed calls for court-storming to be more strictly enforced.
Four of the six major conferences in the sport levy fines against the host school for the first court-storming offense, though the ACC — where Duke plays — has no mandatory penalties for the action. The Big Ten, which is Iowa’s conference, does not consider issuing a fine until the third offense.
Some of the country’s highest-profile college basketball coaches voiced their concerns with court-storming in the immediate aftermath of the incident involving Filipowski, who suffered an injury after a Wake Forest fan banged knees with him during the celebration.
“When are we going to ban court storming?” Scheyer said in his postgame press conference. “When are we going to ban that? How many times does a player have to get into something, where they get punched, or they get pushed, or they get taunted right in their face? It’s a dangerous thing.”
Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes agreed with Scheyer that the practice should end.
“I don’t like court stormings,” he said. “I never have. I’ve been a part of those before. They just don’t feel safe.”
During his turn on the ACC coaches’ teleconference Monday, Scheyer called for the ACC to ban court-storming immediately, rather than wait until the offseason to further explore the issue.
Kansas coach Bill Self noted that his blue-blood program has been on the wrong end of court-stormings several times in recent years. He, too, would like to see it out of the game.
“I would hope they could just totally do away with it,” Self said this week. “… I do believe it’s gotten way out of control.”
Court-storming penalties
ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said during multiple appearances on the network Monday that court-storming should not be allowed.
“Fans don’t belong on the court,” he said. “And fans may not want to hear that, but it’s true.”
Bilas went on to say that it was “pointless” to even discuss it, because he didn’t think anything would be done to eliminate court-storming from the sport.
“It’s not going to stop,” Bilas said. “The NCAA doesn’t want it to stop, and by the NCAA I mean the member institutions. They like it. They like the visual. They take pictures of it and put it all up throughout their institutions and their locker rooms. They use it in recruiting.
“And the truth is, the media has to take some accountability here, too. We like it, too. We put it at the end of every highlight. We tacitly encourage it.”
Bilas noted that when South Carolina upset No. 6-ranked Kentucky this season — resulting in a court-storming in Columbia — the president emeritus of the university joined fans on the court and bragged about it on social media.
“And all these institutions say, ‘We’re happy to pay the fine.’ They’re happy to pay the fine for that visual,” Bilas continued. “And it could all stop tomorrow.”
His solution: Don’t let fans off the court after they’ve already stormed it and have law enforcement officials in the arena issue criminal citations or arrest those on the floor. “And it all stops tomorrow,” Bilas concluded. “But they don’t want to do it. They like it.”
Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne — a former assistant to Barnhart at UK and Oregon State — on Monday floated the idea of home teams being forced to forfeit wins in situations as chaotic as the one that happened at Wake Forest over the weekend.
