Arizona Basketball: Sean Miller is spot on about court-storming dangers

“Court-Storming” is not just an issue for Arizona basketball, but all of college hoops. It needs to stop before someone gets seriously hurt or worse.

Everyone has seen it and even expected to see it when a major upset happens or a huge win takes place. The student section counts down the final seconds of the contest before rushing the floor to celebrate their schools improbable win over a superior opponent or arch rival.

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As soon as the clock hits :00 you see mobs of teenagers run on the court jumping, screaming and celebrating while players are still on the floor.

Of course, 12 of the players on the court are utterly ticked off because no one likes to lose, making the mixture of rowdy teenagers rushing the floor and the defeated team who simply wants to go to the locker room a volatile combination.

That is what Arizona Wildcats head coach Sean Miller was speaking to after his team was defeated by the Colorado Buffaloes 75-72. It was Colorado’s first win over a top-10 team in quite sometime and a huge resume win for the Buffs.

Of course the students were aware of that, and accordingly decided that the occasion called for a proper court-storming.

Here is what the scene looked like:

Now of course some people are going to look at this as a “kids will be kids” situation, but Coach Miller saw things a different way.

At the press conference following his teams defeat he made it clear that in his mind the court storming needs to stop. This is what Coach Miller had to say in the press conference according to a piece on cbssports.com by Sam Vecenie:

"“Eventually what’s going to happen in the Pac-12 is this an Arizona player is going to punch a fan, and they are going to punch the fan out of self-defense. And when it happens — and only when it happens — will everyone take a deep breath and say, ‘We have to do something to protect both teams so that when the game ends we have a deep breath to be able to leave the court.Until that happens, it’s falling on deaf ears because there’s only one team right now that the court’s stormed on. Three consecutive years, anytime we lose on the road it’s the same. Some are more under control, some aren’t. But I’m in control of the whole enterprise. If a 7-foot, 250-pound Kaleb Tarczewski gets bumped, literally within three seconds of the game ending, and he retaliates, what would be the response of our conference?Something has to be done. I’m going to be fine. Somebody can say whatever they want to me. Somebody can do whatever they want. Spit, do whatever you want. But I’m worried about the players that are under my direction…At least have some substance and control so that our guys aren’t potentially in a situation where a lawsuit comes.”"

Now some might see this quote and say that he is coming off as bitter because he feels like his squad is the only team in the PAC-12 that is subjected to the court storming. But he is 100% percent correct about the scenario that he is painting.

All it is going to take is the wrong student, saying the wrong thing to the wrong player after a loss which is obviously the wrong time, and we are going to have a viral video of how a student athlete hauled off and deck a kid half his size.

Here is the reality of the situation. This safety hazard of court storming is much bigger than a student getting knocked out by a power forward from the losing team. Don’t people understand that we live in a dangerous world with some dangerous people in it?

Worrying about a student-athlete beating down a student on the court is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to possible dangerous scenarios.

What if a player is involved in point-shaving for organized crime for example and gets in some type of trouble with the mob? Wouldn’t the storming of the court be the perfect cover for someone to go a stab the player involved with all the students on providing that cover.

It kind of reminds you of that scene on Scarface when Rebenga got shanked!

Chaos provides the perfect cover!

It does not even have to involve organized crime calling a hit on a player. We don’t know what the students are involved in.

There are some fanatics out there that could have lost there FAFSA stipend betting on the losing team that has a screw loose and decides to cause harm to player out of frustration.

Arizona Wildcats

We have not even gotten to the possibility of a student getting trampled during the court storming and ending up paralyzed or dead because of the commotion.

This is a safety issue on so many levels and a lot of these campuses are not fully equipped to handle a rush of jubilant kids  uncontrollably rushing the court.

Sean Miller is right and while some conferences such as the SEC have put rules in place about court storming there needs to be a blanket NCAA rule about it.

Stop the court storming now before someone get killed — period.

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Or at least put a mechanism in place that keeps the players and coaching staff of the losing team safe before the kids will be kids.This is a common sense situation that has common sense solutions. Can’t we use common sense and keep people safe?