“I’m more concerned about the well-being of our guys. [Kyle Filipowski] sprains his ankle. When are we going to ban court-storming? 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. But you look around the country and Caitlin Clark, something happens. Now with Flip, I don’t know what his status will be. It’s one thing, when I played, at least it was 10 seconds, and you were storming the court. Now, the buzzer doesn’t even go off and they’re running on the floor.”
That was Jon Scheyer addressing the ugly and dangerous court-storming following Wake Forest’s 83-79 win over Duke Saturday afternoon.
I’m leading with that because I think it’s that important. A good, at times great, college basketball game overshadowed by a shameful lack of post-game security at Joel Coliseum.
Trust me. I sit court side at Cameron and Duke has a phalanx of trained and paid professionals who take over once the game ends to insure that sort of thing doesn’t happen.
Wake Forest can’t do the same? Unacceptable.
The game?
There were 14 ties and 14 lead changes. Neither team led by more six points. Duke had a chance to win until the final three seconds.
The stars aligned in such a way that we all knew it was going to be tough for Duke. It always seems to be at Wake.
Wake has passed the eye test all season as an NCAA Tournament team, at least once they got their whole team together.
But the people who crunch numbers spent all week telling us that the Deacs had fallen on the wrong side of that mythical bubble and guess who shows up for a game that Wake desperately needed to keep those NCAA hopes alive?
Duke did lots of things well. They had to or they might have been blown out of Joel.
Duke made 53 percent of its field goal attempts, 44 percent from beyond the arc, 80 percent from the line, won the rebounding battle by eight and put four scorers in double figures, Filipowski with 17, Jeremy Roach with 16, Jared McCain with 15, Tyrese Proctor with 14. Duke’s bench outscored Wake’s bench 17-3.
So, how did Duke come out on the short end?
Well, Wake Forest shot even better than Duke, 60 percent from the field, 53 percent (9 for 17) from beyond the arc. Wake only turned it over six times.
Clutch shooting to be sure. But too many open looks for Wake.
And Hunter Sallis presented problems Duke couldn’t solve, 29 points worth of problems.
Sallis was 5 for 6 from beyond the arc. That’s 2.5 points per possession.
And it should be noted that Duke was called for 20 fouls, Wake 12. Ryan Young fouled out in 12 minutes. A lot of Duke’s fouls seem to have been called 25 or feet from the basket.
Undisciplined defense? Or whistle happy refs?
Yes.
Sallis scored six points to stake the Deacs to a 9-7 lead. Duke responded with 3-pointers by Proctor and McCain and led 15-9 after an 8-0 run.
Duke subsequently led 17-11, 19-13.
But they couldn’t build on it. Duke consistently led by three, four, five points the rest of the half. But Sallis hit a 3 to cut Duke’s lead to 21-19, a jumper to tie it at 26, a 3-pointer to make it 34-32 Duke. A foul on Jaylen Blakes with a fraction of a second left allowed Cameron Hildreth to make it 38-36 Duke at the half.
Yes, Duke led. But it was hard to escape the conclusion that the Devils had left some opportunities out there.
Sallis made three 3-pointers in the first five minutes of the second half but Proctor made a couple for Duke and it was tied 53-53, with 13 minutes left.
McCain hit a 3 and Duke led 58-54. Duke had so many chances but just couldn’t get the stops it needed when it needed them to get separation.
The teams traded leads down the stretch, 63-62 Wake, 64-63 Duke, 65-64 Wake, 66-65 Duke, 67-66 Wake, 69-67 Duke, 70-69 Wake, all of this in about two-and-half minutes.
Who would blink first?
The answer was Duke. A couple of turnovers and a Hildreth triple and it was 73-69.
Wake had an 81-76 lead and the ball with less than a minute left. But Efton Reid missed a dunk, Filipowski hit a 3-pointer, Duke got a stop and there was time and space and opportunity, the game ready for the taking.
But Proctor threw it behind Filipowski, the ball sailing out of bounds, the last and costliest of Duke’s 11 turnovers.
Sallis finished it off with two foul shots, the last two of 47 points Duke allowed in the second half.
Then that post-game court-storming, ugly and dangerous and it doesn’t have to be an inevitable consequence of winning a big basketball game. I refuse to believe this cannot be fixed.
This could easily be the big story here, especially if Filipowski misses any games and even more especially if the ACC doesn’t impose some real penalties on Wake Forest.
Fans shouldn’t be on the court until players have cleared the court. Why is this controversial? Why is this so hard to enforce?
Does Wake go dancing now?
Darned if I know.
But Duke had a wonderful opportunity to burnish its resume and came up empty. With North Carolina’s win over Virginia, Duke is back in second place and the runway is pretty short, four regular-season games and then it’s tournament time, first the ACC then the NCAA’s, destination TBD.
And we wait. Wait for some clarity on Filipowski’s status, wait to see if anyone from the ACC can get their heads out of the football-TV spreadsheets long enough to address this in a meaningful way.
There are times over the last few years when I've felt like I needed a battery of attorneys on retainer; labor lawyers, media lawyers, contract lawyers. This is the first time I've felt the need for a criminal lawyer. I do know that European football (American soccer) teams sometimes deal with violent fan behavior by forcing teams to play games in empty stadiums.
And this last few hours has reiterated that I spend too much time on Face Book. Some of the comments are downright sick. One soon-to-be-former FB friend referenced Filipowski's "apparent 'injury.' " Seriously.
Fans shouldn't rush the court and injure opposing players. Seems like a pretty basic core principle. Apparently not.
I also thought of that. I'm pretty sure Scheyer wasn't thinking of that this morning but he noted that doing so implied that the health of the reserves wasn't as important as the health of the starters and I agree.