Over the weekend, Wake Forest took down Duke at home in front of a sold-out crowd supporting the Demon Deacons.
As the buzzer sounded, Wake Forest’s fans rushed down to storm the court and celebrate with the team. However, during this event, several fans collided with Duke’s star Kyle Filipowski, prompting an outcry from Duke coaches and players, as well as many members of the national media, to ban court-storming. On Monday, Pitt head coach and former Duke player and coach Jeff Capel offered his thoughts on the situation.
“It’s an unfortunate situation what happened,” Capel said. “You always want to try to protect the players and the people that are involved in the game, both sides. I’ve seen highlights of it, seen clips of it. Especially when you’re playing certain teams: when you’re playing Duke, when you’re playing North Carolina, when you’re playing Kentucky, Kansas, those schools like that, I think you have to anticipate, if you have them on your home court, that if your team wins there could possibly be a court storming.”
WATCH: Duke’s Kyle Filipowski Injures Ankle During Court-Storming
Initially, it was reported that Filipowski had injured his ankle in the storm. However, Duke head coach Jon Scheyer announced that Filipowski injured his knee. On Monday, Scheyer included that Filipowski did not have any imaging done on the knee.
“I know when I worked at Duke,” Capel continued, “I think every time we lost on the road, except for at North Carolina and I think we lost here at Pitt once, but I think every time we lost there was a court storming. Normally, those places had security, had a plan in effect to protect the players. I think that should be the thing. I’m not saying that I’m against court-storming totally, but when you have situations that just happened against Wake Forest, you saw the situation that happened earlier in the year with Caitlin Clark, it makes me lean towards that if you can’t have it under control.”
After beating Virginia Tech on Saturday, Pitt is now on its way to Clemson, South Carolina to take on the Tigers in a massive ACC matchup. That game will tip off at 7 p.m. on ACC Network.
