Kansas coach Bill Self shares his perspective on court-storming in college basketball

LAWRENCE — As Nicolas Timberlake reflected Monday on his recruitment by Kansas basketball, the prospect of fans storming the court after road losses wasn’t something that came up.

Timberlake, a graduate senior guard who transferred in from Towson, explained Jayhawks coach Bill Self didn’t talk about losing. The pitch to come to KU didn’t include a line like, “Hey, when we lose on the road they’re going to storm the court on us.” And one wouldn’t necessarily expect it to, given the success Kansas has had during Self’s tenure in Lawrence — especially in recent seasons.

But while Self might not make it a priority to discuss court storming protocol with recruits, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an opinion on it. Because of the stature the Jayhawks have as a program, when losses on the road occur it’s not uncommon for a court storming to follow — something that has played out multiple times this season. And when he was asked Monday about what he thought about it all, as the topic has become widely discussed in recent days, he certainly wasn’t in favor of fans just being able to do whatever they want in situations like that.

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“We’ve actually gotten better at it because of the way you can prep your team in certain ways,” Self said, “and a lot of the safety measures up until recently I think has been with the visiting team educating their own players how to handle it — and I mean like, calling a timeout with 15 seconds left and it’s a 10-point game just to get guys out of the game or whatever, or tell them, ‘OK, don’t go out there. Everybody stand next to the sideline.’ Those things happen, but even with that, that should not be the responsibility of the visiting team to educate their guys. I don’t like it.”

Self continued: “I wish they would — legal? Outlaw? But I would think the leagues could certainly put stiff enough penalties down on places that do that would certainly deter those things from ever happening — at least in my standpoint.”

As Self would go on to highlight, the reason fans storming the court after a game has become so widely discussed again was because of what happened after Wake Forest captured an upset win at home against Duke. As fans made their way across the court during the celebration, there was a collision between a fan and a Duke player that led to injury concerns. Many across the sports landscape have since shared their thoughts on what should happen next, with opinions varying substantially.

Self thought what happened at Wake Forest was one of the quickest court storming events he’s ever seen, and mused that if the proper security isn’t in place it’s hard to imagine there wouldn’t be contact between fans and visiting players. It’s hard to imagine, too, that injury or legal ramifications wouldn’t have the potential to follow. So, understanding Self feels things have gotten out of control at this point, he would hope that it could all just be totally done away with.

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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.