Kyle Filipowski believes court storming injury was intentional, Wake Forest responds

The Duke Blue Devils took a frustrating loss on Saturday at Wake Forest 83-79 in what turned out to be an outstanding game between the two in-state rivals.

Normally, an unranked Wake Forest team defeating the No. 8 team in the country, especially when it's Duke, would be the big story, but the incident that drew the most headlines from this game was an injury suffered after the final buzzer to Duke star Kyle Filipowski.

The sophomore was injured after being hit by a Wake Forest student who was storming the court to celebrate the victory. Filipowski was helped off the floor by Duke players and coaches and was clearly in a lot of pain.

Filipowski made it known who he believes was at fault, saying that the hit from the student was "intentional for sure." It's hard to disagree with Filipowski as fans who do storm the court after a win like this need to have some sort of self-awareness. Wake Forest issued a response of their own after Filipowski expressed his displeasure.

Wake Forest takes blame for "unfortunate" injury to Duke star

Wake Forest DA John Currie accepted blame for the incident and issued a statement:

“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. I called Duke Vice President and Director of Athletics Nina King and ACC Senior Associate Commissioner Paul Brazeau immediately after the game and expressed our sincere regret for the situation and our concern for the Duke student-athlete’s well-being. 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 Head 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."

Seeing an injury like this occur to Filipowski just one month after Caitlin Clark got rammed into in an eerily similar court storming celebration at Ohio State University raises the question of whether something has to be done about court storming in general. The answer appears to be a resounding yes from both sides of the Filipowski debacle.

If schools can't be 100 percent certain that the opposing players are not fully safe in the event of an upset, they have to ban students from running onto the court. At the very least the students should only be running after players are in the locker room.

Whether the student actually intended on injuring the Duke star is something only the student will fully know, but these kinds of injuries can be prevented altogether by simply banning court stormers. Students have shown they cannot handle it without injuring players, so they should be punished if they choose to storm the court after a big victory. Fans need to find another way to enjoy a victory. Injuring the opposing team's best player is not the solution.