Kentucky’s Mitch Barnhart joins calls to curtail court-storming. ‘I’ve got some thoughts.’

Count Mitch Barnhart among those who would like to see a stricter set of penalties for schools whose fans storm the court in college basketball.

In an interview with the Herald-Leader before Kentucky’s 91-89 victory at Mississippi State on Tuesday night, the UK athletics director talked about the challenges involved with trying to curtail the practice of court-storming but also made clear that officials at the highest level of the sport need to do more to stop it.

“People talk about that it needs to be banned. It is banned,” Barnhart said. “The problem is we’re having a hard time enforcing it. And it is a challenge.”

The topic of court-storming is front and center in the college basketball world again this week following a couple of recent incidents involving two of the sport’s most high-profile players.

Last month, women’s basketball megastar Caitlin Clark had to be helped off the court by security after she was knocked to the floor by an Ohio State fan as the result of a collision following the Buckeyes’ upset win over Iowa.

Over the weekend, Duke’s Kyle Filipowski — a projected lottery pick in this year’s NBA draft and one of the top players in the men’s game — needed the assistance of teammates to get to the Blue Devils’ locker room after he was hit by Wake Forest fans storming the court to celebrate the Demon Deacons’ upset win.

Clark avoided injury, but Filipowski was still “a little bit sore” Monday, according to Duke coach Jon Scheyer, and his playing status for the team’s game Wednesday night against Louisville was still not decided at that point. Filipowski did end up starting against the Cardinals on Wednesday.

The Kentucky men’s team has been on the receiving end of two court-storming events in the past few weeks, and the Wildcats — as one of the sport’s top programs — have seen more than their share of fans rushing the floor over the years.

Of course, the UK football team has supplied big wins in recent seasons that led to its fans rushing the field, most recently following a victory over Florida during the 2021 season. Barnhart, who has been Kentucky’s AD since 2002, has seen it from both sides.

“I have been a part of many of those,” he said. “And the difference between a field-storming and a court-storming is the confined closeness, and how fast it happens. And it is a little surreal at times. And Kentucky has been on the — I guess you could call it — the receiving end of that on lots of occasions.”

A ‘ban’ on court-storming?

The back-to-back incidents involving a pair of college basketball standouts has led to renewed calls for court-storming to be more strictly enforced.

Four of the six major conferences in the sport levy fines against the host school for the first court-storming offense, though the ACC — where Duke plays — has no mandatory penalties for the action. The Big Ten, which is Iowa’s conference, does not consider issuing a fine until the third offense.

Some of the country’s highest-profile college basketball coaches voiced their concerns with court-storming in the immediate aftermath of the incident involving Filipowski, who suffered an injury after a Wake Forest fan banged knees with him during the celebration.

“When are we going to ban court storming?” Scheyer said in his postgame press conference. “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.”

Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes agreed with Scheyer that the practice should end.

“I don’t like court stormings,” he said. “I never have. I’ve been a part of those before. They just don’t feel safe.”

During his turn on the ACC coaches’ teleconference Monday, Scheyer called for the ACC to ban court-storming immediately, rather than wait until the offseason to further explore the issue.

Kansas coach Bill Self noted that his blue-blood program has been on the wrong end of court-stormings several times in recent years. He, too, would like to see it out of the game.

“I would hope they could just totally do away with it,” Self said this week. “… I do believe it’s gotten way out of control.”

Court-storming penalties

ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said during multiple appearances on the network Monday that court-storming should not be allowed.

“Fans don’t belong on the court,” he said. “And fans may not want to hear that, but it’s true.”

Bilas went on to say that it was “pointless” to even discuss it, because he didn’t think anything would be done to eliminate court-storming from the sport.

“It’s not going to stop,” Bilas said. “The NCAA doesn’t want it to stop, and by the NCAA I mean the member institutions. They like it. They like the visual. They take pictures of it and put it all up throughout their institutions and their locker rooms. They use it in recruiting.

“And the truth is, the media has to take some accountability here, too. We like it, too. We put it at the end of every highlight. We tacitly encourage it.”

Bilas noted that when South Carolina upset No. 6-ranked Kentucky this season — resulting in a court-storming in Columbia — the president emeritus of the university joined fans on the court and bragged about it on social media.

“And all these institutions say, ‘We’re happy to pay the fine.’ They’re happy to pay the fine for that visual,” Bilas continued. “And it could all stop tomorrow.”

His solution: Don’t let fans off the court after they’ve already stormed it and have law enforcement officials in the arena issue criminal citations or arrest those on the floor. “And it all stops tomorrow,” Bilas concluded. “But they don’t want to do it. They like it.”

Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne — a former assistant to Barnhart at UK and Oregon State — on Monday floated the idea of home teams being forced to forfeit wins in situations as chaotic as the one that happened at Wake Forest over the weekend.

“When you have a sustained rush like what just happened the other day at Wake, you lose the game,” Byrne said. “That will get people to stop.”

Barnhart isn’t in agreement with changing the result of a game.

“I never want to do anything that takes away from the effort of the young men and women on the court, because they have played and they have earned the right for the victory. So I’m not sure that I agree with the forfeiture of the game,” he said. “But I do believe that there have to be other things that we think about that changes the mentality and causes people to want to celebrate in the stands and let the players enjoy the moment and respectfully get off the court. There’s got to be a way. ...

“I’ve got some thoughts. I shared those last year with our safety committee in the Southeastern Conference, and I know it will come up on our agenda again. And I’m anxious and willing to share those same thoughts again.”

Barnhart told the Herald-Leader that he would save his specific recommendations for more formal meetings among league officials and other college athletics leaders later this year, but he did tell the ESPN broadcast crew for Tuesday’s game that one possible deterrent could be the loss of future home games. For example, if a team’s fans rush the court, one of that program’s home dates in conference play the following season would switch to a road game, which would lead to a loss of revenue and a competitive disadvantage for that game.

“It’s going to have to be more than just a fine,” Barnhart told the Herald-Leader. “It’s going to have to be more than — on the second or third or fourth (offense) — we’re finally going to get our arms around it. We’ve got to be more thoughtful than that.

“I’ve been a part of one where I had my arms wrapped around a coach’s waist, rushing him off the court, with people in your face screaming things and saying things. It’s hard. And I was scared — not as much for myself — but for that coach. And I think that we’re one step away from — not just an injury — but something really tragic happening. Somebody really getting hurt. And so I’m hopeful, before it gets to that spot, that we can find a pathway that takes this word ‘banning’ off. And gets to a spot of understanding and enforcing. And we better do a better job of that. Because this nonsense of a ‘ban’ — it’s already banned.”

Court-storming vs. Kentucky

UK has been on the wrong end of a court-storming twice this season: the aforementioned game at South Carolina in January and then again following the buzzer-beating loss at LSU last week.

According to a study by AL.com, the LSU game tied Kentucky men’s basketball with Alabama football for the most times an opposing team in the league has rushed the court/field since the SEC began issuing fines for such behavior in 2004.

Both of those programs have been the victims of a court-storming or field-rushing seven times in that span. That total does not include nonconference court-stormings, however, and the Wildcats have been on the receiving end of those, too, including in losses to Notre Dame two seasons ago and, most notably, at Indiana during UK’s 2011-12 national championship season.

John Calipari’s Kentucky teams have endured six SEC court-stormings during his tenure as head coach.

“Coach Cal has had his share of those,” UK assistant coach Chin Coleman said Monday. “So we’re kind of scripted to kind of sense when something like that is going to happen. Coach Cal has a routine for us when we know that there could be a possible court-storm at the end of a game. But it’s tough.”

Calipari was able to call his players off the floor before South Carolina’s fans rushed it last month, but Coleman pointed to last week’s LSU game as a particularly troubling situation. The last-second nature of that ending meant the Cats had no time to get to safety before the fans stormed the court.

“We just had one, and there was some brutal stuff being said to us right there at the beginning of that court-storming,” Coleman said. “And there were some kids that were really brutal with their language. … So it’s kind of tough. And I hate what happened to the kid at Duke, but I think they’re going to probably do something about it now that so many people are complaining about it. Now that it has a lot of attention, I think there will be an even harsher punishment.”

The SEC reworked its policy for punishing violators in such instances, and the current 2023-24 academic year is the first for a new multi-tiered system to dish out fines to schools whose fans end up on the football field or basketball court after a big win.

That process calls for a $100,000 fine for the first offense, a $250,000 fine for a second offense, and a $500,000 fine for any additional offenses. For conference games, fines are paid to the opposing school, so the $100,000 fines for South Carolina and LSU were sent to Kentucky. In nonconference games, fines go to the SEC Post-Graduate Scholarship Fund.

Kentucky fans have never stormed the court at Rupp Arena, and Calipari has often been critical of the practice in the past, citing safety concerns. Following the Kentucky-Indiana game during the 2011-12 season — when Christian Watford’s buzzer-beater won it and set off an IU court-storming — the UK coach was particularly vocal in his opposition to such celebrations.

That scene effectively ended the Kentucky-Indiana series, which had been played for 43 consecutive seasons until 2011, with Calipari unwilling to return to Assembly Hall in Bloomington and Indiana officials wishing to keep home sites on the table for future games.

The UK-Indiana series will be renewed starting with a game in Rupp Arena during the 2025-26 season, but the Wildcats won’t return to Bloomington until Dec. 16, 2028, as part of that deal. That game would fall during the final season of Calipari’s current 10-year contract.

Louisville head coach Kenny Payne was a Kentucky assistant for the 2011-12 season. During the ACC coaches’ teleconference Monday, he referenced that trip to Indiana while voicing his support for updated protocols related to court-storming.

“They stormed the court, and it was hard getting out of there, getting off the court for the players. For the coaches, as well,” Payne said. “It was chaotic in that situation. Again, we’ve got to protect players and young people from getting in any incidents. Players trying to protect themselves and maybe pushing somebody? Or a fan hitting somebody?

“You know, you just don’t want those situations.”

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