Court Storming Etiquette

As we shift our focus from football to basketball, I thought it was time to revive another one of my lost blogs from OKBlitz.com: Court Storming Etiquette. The exciting games from this past week (Indiana stunning Kentucky and Kansas taking down Ohio State) reminded me of it.

Anyone who has been to college knows the feeling: being in the stands at the end of a big win and getting that urge to run onto the court. 

I remember my first court storming experience. It was February 2, 2002. Fourth-ranked Cincinnati came to Milwaukee on a 20-game winning streak, and it had won Conference USA every year since its inception. Dwyane Wade led Marquette past the Bearcats in a 74-60 victory. 

Heck yes. We stormed the floor. We went nuts. (click the link. If you look closely in the lower right-hand corner, you may notice a young student reporter with a questionable haircut.)

Court storming? Oh yeah. I've been there a couple times.
I took this photo after Marquette won the C-USA title.

Marquette hadn't been to the tournament in five years, and our program was finally back on the map. We stormed the floor again a year later when Marquette beat Cincinnati again to win its first (and only) Conference USA championship. Honestly, I think we were all happy to have winning the title as an excuse to rub it in Cincinnati's face a little more.

Storming the floor is fun, but you can't do it every time your team wins a game. The young, immature fan in all of us wants to run out there after every victory. We can't do that, though. Then, it wouldn't be special, and it gets really irritating when it happens too often. There are rules. Unfortunately these rules are unwritten, and they are complicated with a lot of gray area. Here's a little guide that may or may not help students decide when rushing the court is appropriate. We don't have to call these rules. Let's just call them suggestions.

You just won a tournament berth from a one-bid league?
Court storming is both allowed and encouraged. Go nuts.

ALWAYS storm the court if you play in a one-bid conference and clinch a bid to the NCAA tournament. For small conferences, the opportunity to go to the Big Dance is so rare, you have to celebrate when you get the chance. It’s especially rare when you get to clinch that bid at home. So if you get a chance to celebrate an NCAA bid at home, do it.

RARELY storm the court if the team you beat is not ranked. It was because of this rule that I questioned an Oral Roberts celebration after defeating Missouri two years ago. Missouri wasn't ranked, but it was a huge win for ORU, a Summit League team. Missouri was just 5-2 coming in, but it was still a Big 12 team that went to the Elite 8 the previous season. I forgave the ORU fans because I’m locally biased. It was sweet for a Summit League team to knock off a Big 12 team, and it had been a while since ORU had a great win like that. So, it was acceptable, but let’s stay in the stands for the next one. Okay, guys?

NEVER storm the court if your team is ranked in the top 10, maybe top 15. If the team is that good, you should expect to win every single time.

RARELY storm the court if you are a ranked team. Going along with the previous point, if your team is good enough to be ranked, you should anticipate winning every home game. So, you should always enter these games expecting a win, and home wins by ranked teams should be treated with class. However…

Wins over hated rivals make court storming more forgivable.

ALWAYS storm the court if you end a long run of futility against a hated rival. This would apply to a program like Kansas State, for example. A few years ago, the Wildcats had this guy named Michael Beasley, were ranked 24th in the country and hosting second-ranked Kansas. The Jayhawks had owned Kansas State forever, as KU had won 24 straight in Manhattan. Kansas State won, and the students rightly rushed the floor. Ending an embarrassing streak like that warrants a court rush every time. So, in short, if your rival has beaten you down for a long time, and you finally win a game, rub it in.

ALMOST ALWAYS storm the court if your team is unranked and upsets a highly ranked (1-10 or so) team. It’s an upset. Celebrate.

RARELY storm the court if your team is unranked and beats a team ranked between 20 and 25. This is especially true if your team is in the “others receiving votes” category. If your team is almost in the top 25, and the team you beat is barely in, and your team is at home, is it really an upset? It helps to know the point spread. Your team may actually be favored.

ALWAYS storm the court if you are an unranked team and you upset the nation’s top-ranked team. This is always cause for celebration. However...

Students at this arena (and others) should stay off the court.

NEVER storm the court if you are a fan of one of the nation’s elite programs: North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, Duke, and Indiana fit this category. These programs should never see their students rush the floor. Ever. They are above it because of the number of national titles and All-Americans they have had. No matter how down one of these programs may get, they should still treat every win like they have done it before, because they have.

This is where Indiana's win over Kentucky comes into question. It crosses an "always" with a "never." Stupid gray area. I can't blame the IU students, though. If I were a student in Assembly Hall that day, you know I would have been on the floor. Indiana fans, though, should probably never storm the court again. If the program is truly "back," let's act like it.

One that may never be used...

ABSOLUTELY storm the court if your team ends an extended, history-making winning streak. In today’s college basketball world, I can’t imagine any men's program racking up a ridiculous winning streak of 35 or more. I can't see a team going unbeaten and then extending that winning streak well into another season like the Connecticut women seem to do routinely these days. However, if any team ever does do something as crazy as John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins’ 88-game winning streak, the school that breaks that should definitely storm the floor, tear down the rims, break things on press row, everything. But, I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to say that no team will even approach half of that UCLA streak, so this rule is pretty irrelevant, but it’s good to have anyway.

Finally, most importantly...

NEVER storm the court if you are not a student. It's for the kids only. Once you graduate from college, you graduate from court storming.