Storming the Court - as inspired by Duke @ Wisconsin 12/02/09

I was watching Duke and Wisconsin last night rooting against Duke like I normally do. I happily watched the final seconds tick away as Wisconsin sealed the win. All of a sudden I got really, really irritated as I watched Wisconsin fans storm the court. Nothing against Duke. They've been one of the top 5 programs in the country for awhile now and I believe they have more wins than anyone else in college basketball in this decade. But Wisconsin has been Big Ten Champ three times and won the Big Ten Tournament two times this decade along with making the NCAA Tournament every year in the 2000's. I'm not even going back the extra year when they made the Final Four. They are 28th Best Program of All-Time according to the ESPN/Sagarin ratings All-Time ratings. And finally, not to mention, they were only 5 POINT UNDERDOGS in the game!

Don't get me wrong either, I love watching people storm the court. I love the way it looks and as a fan of college sports I know how much fun it must be and it makes me wish I was back in college, parlaying that court-storming in to a night of celebratory bar-hopping. Maybe it's just me but storming the court should be saved for the most special wins in a program's history. Those rare occasions where a team consistently in the Top 25 goes to play a smaller school at their place and gets upset or a one-bid conference tournament winner. Those are the ones I like to see. I'll even go as far as to say that a Power 6 conference should never storm the court against your own or another Power 6 conference. I think it disrespects the program and the conference.

I understand the Wisconsin fans were just having fun and were excited by the win but to me it said, "Hey Duke, you are substantially better than us. Thank you for the opportunity to play you at our place so we could witness this amazing win for our program." To me, that's sad because Wisconsin should be thought of as better than that.