Vanderbilt and rushing the court

[Norm Peterson]

First of all, I have to confess I'm not in favor of a separate college hoops board for topics like this, but I am a follower of rules even if they aren't my rules, so ...

 

Vanderbilt fined $100,000 by the SEC for their students rushing the court after beating Kentucky on Saturday.

 

I shit you not.  The SEC has a rule requiring member institutions to prohibit students from rushing the floor and obligates them to provide sufficient security to make sure it doesn't happen.

 

It was a second offense for Vandy, so it carried the $100K fine; the first offense was in ... 2007 and carried a $25K fine.

 

If they let it happen again, it might carry a $250,000 penalty.

 

My opinion?  I'm in favor of floor-rushing.  I don't see anything wrong with it.  Let the kids have their fun.  It's part of the experience and the adrenaline rush of watching a big win in person.

 

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/14871538/sec-fines-vanderbilt-commodores-100k-fans-rushing-court

[Silverbacked1]

If that is what is going to happen.  Then get organized and either do the slow motion court storm so everybody can see it coming, Or stand on the side lines and wait till both teams have shaken hands and the visitors are off the floor.

 

Then run and crush it!

[atskooc]

I'm not sure why the teams have the handshake line, honestly.

 

I don't see much value in forcing people to shake hands at this level; it's not little league.

 

Get the teams off the floor quickly and we don't have to worry about fans interacting with the players in a court-storming situation.

[49r]

Cal had put in his walk-ons and whatnot at the end (and sent the rest of the team into the locker room before the game was even over) in anticipation of the court storm too.  So, really, there wasn't a handshake line for this one.  Or at least there was only a very short one.

 

Still, the "court storm" after this one was pretty pathetic.  The layout of Memorial Gym does not lend itself to a group of students making it to the court in anything resembling a "storm".  It was more like a peaceful court stroll.

 

The players could have had their handshake line, sipped a cup of tea and discussed the upcoming super tuesday primaries in quite a bit of depth, then taken group photos and wandered off the court without any real purpose before any students would have gotten there to cause them harm.

 

In other words, $100 grand seems pretty steep as a fine for what happened in Nashville Saturday.