Storming the court. It’s meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing. Something you get to tell people. “Yeah I was there and yeah, it was incredible.”
I’ll never forget when dozens of MQP faithful stormed the court in eighth grade after the mighty Eagles of MQP felled Holy Infant in a classic CYC City/County matchup. Obviously most people associate storming the court with college basketball, but my nostalgic tangent was worth mentioning.
In college, storming the court involves thousands of college-aged students celebrating with their team’s players over a huge win. It’s one of the best traditions in college basketball. Now, the adjective used to describe that win can certainly vary. “Monumental,” “legendary” and “historic” are all words that should come to mind. In recent years, though, student sections have been apt to storm the court when the wins have been “good” or “surprising” or “almost impressive.”
It’s getting out of control.
I remember five years ago, when Rick Reilly, one of my favorite sports writers, wrote about how it had become an epidemic. He explained that students are rushing the court far too frequently, citing some pretty outrageous examples, which included Wake Forest, who was No. 4 at the time, rushing the court after beating North Carolina, who was ranked No. 3. That was five years ago.
Not that I expect one column to change the mindset of college students nationwide, but the epidemic has only grown since.
That said, I’ve been wanting to write a column about this since I first started writing for The Maneater. Not to change anyone’s mindset, but rather to air my grievances about one of my biggest pet peeves in sports.
The timing of this column was inspired by the court-rushing K-State student body after they upset Kansas on Monday night. This garnered a lot of national attention because Kansas State fans ran into several Kansas players (resulting in one unlucky Kansas State fan being hurled to the ground by a Kansas staffer) as well as coach Bill Self.
Now, I have no issue with that. That’s an obvious risk that is going to come with storming the court, and the fact Self may have been hip-checked by a student makes me giddy. (Honestly, K-State players should be hip-checking Bruce Weber, as his inevitable firing in two years will keep the program in mediocrity for years. But that’s a topic for a different column.)
My issue is that K-State and Kansas are in-state rivals in the same conference. I’m well aware that K-State rarely beats Kansas. I don’t care. Unless you have _never_ beaten your in-state rival, you cannot storm the court when you beat them (when UNC stormed the court after beating Duke last year, I passed out).
While storming the court at Mizzou Arena at some point would be awesome, I don’t _want_ to. Storming the court is an open admission that you didn’t expect your team to win. That you doubted your team even.
No matter how bad things might get for Mizzou, I hope I’m never in a position where I’m about to storm the court. Unless I’ve got a clear shot at Self.
