Kansas basketball coach Bill Self offers thoughts on court-storming after Duke player's injury

Kansas basketball fans probably remember when former Jayhawk forward Jamari Traylor was shoved by a K-State fan in 2015. Iowa women's basketball superstar Caitlin Clark collided with a fan last month. Despite all of the dangers court-storming imposes, the NCAA has done very little to protect its student-athletes.

This past Saturday, Duke and head coach Jon Scheyer made headlines after Wake Forest defeated the Blue Devils and stormed the court afterward. All-American candidate Kyle Filipowski crashed into a fan running onto the court and hurt his knee in the process. Filipowski said in a postgame interview that he believes the fan purposefully bumped him.

The injury has sparked a nationwide debate about whether court-storming should be allowed in college basketball. Bill Self might be more familiar with the subject than anyone in the country. Being the program that they are, Kansas is stormed after nearly every road loss. He offered his thoughts during a press conference yesterday.

“Well, I certainly don’t think it ever should be, ‘Let them do as they want,'” Self continued. “We’ve probably been stormed on about as much as anybody I would think at least, there was a period of time, like every road loss we had on a home court, it seemed like it was a court storming.”

The Hall of Fame coach suggested the conferences could put down harsher penalties on schools that do storm the court, especially in the manner that Wake Forest fans did. Self went into more detail about this.

“The one that everyone’s talking about as recently, that was one of the quickest ones I’ve ever seen. I mean that that happens so fast,” Self stated. “And if you don’t have the proper security in a situation like that, it would be hard to imagine that fans do not come in contact with visiting players, which could lead obviously to injuries or maybe legal things down the road.”

He ended his remarks with, "I would hope they could just totally do away with it. We haven't stormed the court here. I don't think we ever have here in my time and even before that. I'm not saying that in any way shape or form that, 'That's the way it has to be,' or we're the standard, but I do believe it's gotten way out of control.”