Duke coach Scheyer wants the ACC to prevent court-storming

Duke coach Jon Scheyer wants the Atlantic Coast Conference to implement measures to prevent court-storming after star big man Kyle Filipowski was hobbled following a collision with a fan during a weekend loss at Wake Forest.

Scheyer said Monday that Filipowski was “a little bit sore” following the incident, which left him sporting a bag of ice on his knee after banging his right leg into the leg of a fan running by him toward midcourt.

“Absolutely we shouldn’t wait until next year, something should be done right now,” Scheyer said during the weekly league coaches teleconference, adding: “At the end of the day, players and coaches and officials are the only people that belong on a court.”

Scheyer — who initially misspoke Saturday when he said Filipowski hurt his ankle — said Monday that the preseason Associated Press All-american didn’t require any type of diagnostic internal imaging for his knee to search for a structural injury. Filipowski didn’t have a significant limp when he spoke to a few reporters after the game, though his status wasn’t immediately clear for the 10thranked Blue Devils’ game Wednesday against an eight-win Louisville team.

Scheyer followed his postgame call to ban court-storming with a plea for the ACC to put such a policy in place now, even with Duke down to four regular-season games and only one on the road.

The ACC requires member schools to have detailed safety procedures in place for managing court-stormings. But it historically has not levied fines, something four of the six major basketball conferences do for a first offense — such as the Southeastern Conference issuing a $100,000 penalty on LSU after its fans stormed the court following last week’s win over a ranked Kentucky team.

The image of Filipowski having to be helped off the court amid the chaos only added to the discussion on the dangers of court-storming in a season with multiple runins, the highest-profile one being when Iowa star Caitlin Clark was accidentally knocked down by a fan running onto the court after a January upset loss.

Texas rose to its highest ranking in more than a year in The Associated Press Top 25 women’s basketball poll after another week of shakeups among the top teams.

The Longhorns moved up two spots to No. 3 after four of the top

WOMEN’S TOP 25 POLL >>

seven teams lost at least one game last week. Texas, winners of seven straight, hadn’t been this high in the Top 25 since the school was also third on Nov. 14, 2022.

South Carolina remained the unanimous No. 1 team, receiving all 35 votes from the national media panel, after routing Alabama and Kentucky. The Gamecocks clinched their third consecutive outright SEC regular-season championship and eighth in 11 years.

Ohio State, second in the poll, clinched a share of the Big Ten title with its 14th consecutive win on Sunday.

Stanford was fourth after splitting a pair of home games against Arizona and Arizona State. Despite the loss to the Wildcats, the Cardinal clinched at least a share of their 27th Pac-12 regular-season championship.

Virginia Tech is fifth followed by

Iowa, USC, UCLA, LSU and Uconn. It’s the first time that UCLA, LSU and Uconn — who were top five in the preseason poll — are all in top 10 in a month.

MEN’S TOP 25 POLL >> Now it is Houston’s turn at the top of AP men’s poll.

The Cougars moved to No. 1 for the first time this season in Monday’s latest poll, climbing one spot to end the six-week stay of reigning national champion Connecticut. Houston (24-3) became the fifth team to hold the top spot this season.

FAIR MOVES UP SCORING LIST >> Dyaisha Fair of Syracuse scored 23 points in Sunday’s win over Pittsburh and moved into fifth on the NCAA career scoring list, passing Brittney Griner. Fair has 3,302 points and is 91 points shy of catching Jackie Stiles for fourth on the list.