What the heck is going on in college basketball? First, we’ve got court storming going on like every other night, which is absurd but we’ll get to that, and then we’ve got fans running onto the court individually in attempts to start altercations. That was the case when a moronic UC Santa Barbara fan ran onto the court during a game against Hawaii on Thursday night. What does this mean? The NCAA needs to crack down on this kind of behavior.
Court-storming in the positive way is a good thing, but it can easily turn ugly. But an individual fan running onto the court in what at least appeared to be an attempt to fight the opposing team’s coach is grounds for severe punishment. That’s not to punish the school, but it’s to let the fans know that such asinine behavior isn’t acceptable and won’t be tolerated.
Seriously, that buffoon who ran onto the court Thursday night should have gotten bunched in the face by Garrett Nevels instead of just pushed back toward the stands. You notice how he kept running his mouth, but also kept running back toward his seat once the Hawaii players came at him. You also notice that the UC Santa Barbara players didn’t even attempt to defend him. That’s because they were embarrassed and kids like this need to understand that.
Now Hawaii head coach Gib Arnold had a point when he said the kid was wasted and that’s another issue entirely, but the school needs to penalized to eliminate the fan’s motivation for doing something like this. Either that or a wall needs to be placed in between the fans and the court like all other sports. When a coach or player is actually injured by a stupid fan, action will be taken, but it will be too late then.
