Oakland Zoo president can't envision fans ever storming the floor at the Pete

The scene Saturday at Wake Forest’s LJV Memorial Coliseum — when students rushed the court without regard to their own or others’ safety after the Demon Deacons defeated No. 8 Duke — brought up a question among Pitt fans:

Why doesn’t such an uncontrollable, dangerous event happen at Petersen Events Center?

"That should not happen. That right there is why court-storming should not happen."

ESPN's Chris Spatola weighs in on court-storming after Duke's Kyle Filipowski hurt following Wake Forest's upset win over Duke.

(Correction: this tweet initially attributed that line to… pic.twitter.com/7UYy9Tudpu

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 24, 2024

ESPN just showed a new angle of the court-storming at Wake Forest where Duke's Kyle Filipowski was injured. Can clearly see where he hurts his knee as a fan taunts him while racing to midcourt. Unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/ABAsKC2kTI

— Kyle Boone (@kyletheboone) February 24, 2024

The answer is simple: The Oakland Zoo, a student-run fan group that likes to mock opposing players without coming in contact with them, won’t tolerate it.

“The Pete floor has never been stormed before, and there’s not a scenario I can envision where it ever would be,” Zoo president Austin Hogeboom told TribLive on Sunday morning.

“Sure, you have 1,000 students right on court level and big-time opponents playing here regularly, but the reason it’s never happened comes down to expectations. Simply put, we have an expectation to win every game we play at home.

“Storming the court happens when a team pulls off a win so big and unexpected that the fan base reacts accordingly. Winning at home for us is the standard, regardless of the opponent.

“This building has seen so many huge wins, and it wasn’t the efforts of security guards that kept Pitt students off the court. It was the Zoo’s culture of winning expectations.”

There have been many opportunities when Pitt defeated a ranked team at the Pete, most notably after the Panthers’ 70-60 victory against No. 1 UConn on March 7, 2009. Plenty of noise, but coaches, players and officials were the only individuals on the floor at the end.

That’s not to say Pitt fans always have been well-behaved. They tore down a goalpost after the last game at Pitt Stadium, a 37-27 victory against Notre Dame on Nov. 14, 1999 — before most of the current Zoo members were born.

Imagine the shame now felt on Wake Forest’s Winston-Salem, N.C., campus after Duke star center Kyle Filipowski suffered a sprained ankle and needed assistance to hobble off the floor while trying to escape the mob scene.

Wake Forest athletic director John Currie issued a statement and called ACC senior associate commissioner Paul Brazeau and Duke AD Nina King to apologize.

“On behalf of Wake Forest, we sincerely regret the unfortunate on-court incident following this afternoon’s men’s basketball game and hope the involved Duke student-athlete is doing better,” Currie said in his statement. “Although our event management staff and security had rehearsed postgame procedures to protect the visiting team and officials, we clearly must do better.

“I appreciate the postgame comments of Duke coach Jon Scheyer and I am in complete agreement that something more must be done about the national phenomenon of court and field storming, and Wake Forest looks forward to being a part of those conversations.”

Scheyer, who was in the middle of the massive scrum while trying to guide Filipowski to safety, called for a ban on all court-storming incidents. Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes also expressed his displeasure with the incident.

“When are we going to ban court-storming?” Scheyer said after the game. “How many times does a player have to get into something where they get punched or they get pushed or they get taunted right in their face? It’s a dangerous thing.

“Look around the country. (Iowa women’s star) Caitlin Clark, something happens, now (Filipowski). I don’t know what his status is going to be. When I played (for Duke), at least it was 10 seconds you would storm the court. Now, the buzzer doesn’t even go off and they’re running on the floor. This has happened to us a bunch this year.”

Clark was knocked to the floor and uninjured when she collided with an Ohio State fan during a court-storming incident Jan. 21 in Columbus, Ohio.

Also, the SEC fined LSU $100,000 when its fans stormed the court Wednesday after an upset victory against No. 17 Kentucky.