During a 30-year career as a major ESPN broadcaster, Dave Pasch says he was at the microphone for two college basketball games that ended in an assault on the court. One occurred earlier this month when unranked LSU upset Kentucky as time expired at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, La. Pasch recalled this week a conversation he and analyst Jay Williams had had with a member of the LSU athletics department staff before the game.
“We asked, if they beat Kentucky, will they storm the field?” He said Easter. “He was like, ‘No, we’re not going to storm the field here. We already beat Kentucky.” Well, they won with this crazy last-second shot and, of course, they stormed the room.”
In the final sequence of the game, you can clearly hear Williams say, “Didn’t we talk today about whether LSU has the right protocol in place for a court storm?” as ESPN cameras broadcast a wide shot of LSU fans pouring onto the field.
The issue of court assault went national this week after Wake Forest fans stormed the floor of the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum following a win over Duke on Saturday. Cameras captured video of several fans making contact with Duke star Kyle Filipowski, who ended up limping off the court, prompting Duke coach Jon Scheyer, furious in a postgame press conference, to ask, “When will we ban courtroom assaults? ” Last month, Iowa star Caitlin Clark got into an argument with an Ohio State fan following the Buckeyes’ loss to the Hawkeyes in Columbus, Ohio.

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ESPN producer Eric Mosley and director Mike Roig estimated they worked 16 to 18 college games in which a team’s fans stormed a field. Many of these court storms occurred when a team had a home loss to perennial heavyweights Duke, Kansas or Kentucky. Roig directed Arkansas’ 80-75 win over Duke on Nov. 29, and you can watch the Long shot cut by Roig as fans poured onto the Bud Walton Arena Floor.
Mosley said production planning for the storming of the courts happens well before tip time. ESPN production crews scout ahead where they can find a safe place for their reporter and camera operators to interview a winning coach and player. Directors like Roig hold meetings with camera operators hours before games to go over protocol and various scenarios, including storming a pitch. The camera setup is such that viewers potentially have access to many entry points. For a regular season college basketball game, there are usually five unmanned fixed and robotic cameras. Those are in positions safe from the crowd. Then there are three hand-held cameras controlled by operators located on the baselines and center court. (The camera above for Wake Forest-Duke got the best shot of what happened to Filipowski.)
“One of the first questions we ask when we arrive on site with the (sports information director) for some games is whether there is an appetite for a court storm or whether the type of security allows for it,” Mosley said. “Let’s find out where the student section is and what the security situation is there. We ask where can we find our cameras and our reporter to meet a coach and star player for the post match interview? We try to get ahead of these things as early as possible because we don’t want to get trapped in a position where our guys like Holly Rowe, Jess Sims, Kris Budden and our cameramen are not safe. We don’t want them trapped and trampled. For the most part, we have been quite successful.”
The play-by-play broadcaster for the Duke-Arkansas game was Dan Shulman, who estimates he has called 20 to 25 games involving court assaults during his career as an ESPN broadcaster. (Shulman is also the television voice of the Toronto Blue Jays.)
“As funny as they may seem on TV, I’ve always been worried about what might happen,” Shulman said. “I remember a court assault during a Louisville-Charlotte game I was covering, and Doris Burke, who was the sideline reporter at the game, was trying to get an interview with the Charlotte coach, and I was worried about the her safety. There was complete chaos on the pitch.
“Every time there’s a storm in the courtroom, it’s hard for us sitting at our table to really see what’s going on. All we can see are the people closest to our table. Sometimes the student section may be behind our broadcast location, so knowing that they are heading to the courthouse can obviously be a little disconcerting as you’re trying to navigate a broadcast. I think most people in television hope that when this happens, it’s all in good fun and no one gets hurt. There is no doubt that it is a good view on TV, enjoyed by many viewers. But for me the risk outweighs the reward.”

Wake Forest fans took over their home field after Saturday’s win. An injury to Duke’s Kyle Filipowski has reignited discussion of court assault. (Courtesy photo Halverson/NCAA via Getty Images)
Bob Fishman agrees with Shulman. Fishman retired from CBS Sports last year after 50 years working between CBS News and CBS Sports and officiated 39 NCAA men’s Final Fours, including Michael Jordan’s game-winning shot in the 1982 title game and Houston’s defeat by North Carolina State the following year. Fishman said he’s been thinking a lot recently about court assault and would never tell a cameraman to run down the court during one, making sure they maintained a position under the basket and shot what they could.
“I’m pretty firm on what I think should be done — you can’t ignore it,” Fishman said. “He’s not like a player who runs across the field during a football game and you don’t show it. I think you have to prove it because he is part of history, especially now that players are injured. I would take a wide shot of some kind, maybe from a back camera or a big beauty camera, as we call it. Then I made sure that my cameras in the field recorded everything and that the material was fed into a recorder. I would never put it on the air. But I think you have to show something, which in my mind (would be) a high bar.
Broadcasters and production crews, especially at 24/7 news outlets like ESPN, must follow the story to its conclusion, whether they are live or not.
“We have to keep in mind that the documentation continues even when we’re not on the air,” Mosley said. “We have to treat it like news. For example, some of Filipowski’s stuff happened after the crew had already logged off and the network had moved on to another game. We are taught and told over and over again that we need to hang in there and document for as long as we can. “That’s because someone will be looking for that stuff.”
Mosley and Roig say they often think about how to address documenting an assault in court without glorifying the action.
“It’s a tough question to answer,” Roig said. “You’re documenting it and you’re kind of glamorizing it at the same time. As a director, you’re toeing that line. As directors we are always taught that when a person enters the field, you don’t let them see it. Because more people will if you show them. He goes far and away. But this is a little different animal, right? We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of people coming into the field. …You blur the lines of documentation or glorify it. “You have to have the mindset of documenting it, but at the same time you have to be careful about how you document it.”
During a segment on ESPN’s “First Take” on Monday, longtime ESPN college basketball commentator Jay Bilas was critical of sports broadcasters who glorify court assaults.
“Years ago, when fans ran onto the field during a game, it was network policy not to show it because we didn’t want to encourage it,” Bilas said. “So what does this say about how we in the media use these images now? We cannot deny that we encourage it. Or at least he tacitly approves of it. Everyone needs to take some responsibility for this. “I don’t think it’s right to allow it, but I know it will continue.”
Roig said: “It’s a really tricky point because as directors it’s a great scene, right? You want to show it. But I had never had one before I saw the one last week (with Wake Forest-Duke) where it got to that point where it wasn’t fun anymore.”

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(Top photo from the scene after Saturday’s Duke-Wake Forest game: Cory Knowlton/USA Today)