Iowa State Fans Stormed The Court After Beating Iowa Last Night, Fractured A Journalist’s Leg

SteveHolt10 years ago

Normally, it would be very unusual to condone a court-storming when a top-five team beats an unranked opponent at home. However, there are some cases where this act is validated, like Thursday night, when No. 4 Iowa State erased a 20-point deficit to beat in-state rival Iowa 83-82 and remain undefeated.

Iowa State fans are nice people. They don’t hate a lot of things. In fact, one of the few things they do hate is the The University of Iowa. So, naturally, fans stormed the court inside Hilton Coliseum to celebrate with the players. Unfortunately, the ordeal led to one well-known Des Moines journalist fracturing his leg.

From The Des Moines Register:

Randy Peterson, The Des Moines Register’s columnist covering Iowa State sports, suffered a compound leg fracture during the Hilton Coliseum court-storming after Iowa State’s 83-82 victory over Iowa on Thursday night.

Peterson’s tibia and fibula were fractured during the post-game rush, according to former Register reporter Rick Brown, who was with Peterson at the hospital. Peterson was transported from Ames to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines. Peterson tweeted early Friday that he believed he locked legs with someone. He was scheduled for a late Thursday surgery.

In an interview with “The Dan Patrick Show” Friday morning, Peterson said: “I knew the students would come. I’ve seen this happen a hundred times, as you have. I knew the students were coming. I was trying to beat it and it just didn’t work out.”

Peterson set the record straight on how the incident occurred:

“I was not trampled,” he said. “I was knocked to the ground but as soon as I was on the ground, there was security all over me.”

His take on fans storming the court?

“I’m OK with it,” Peterson said. “Let the people who need to get off the floor first get off the floor and the students can celebrate all they want.”

Iowa State’s coach felt bad about the incident, but not THAT bad:

“I hate that Randy got hurt,” Iowa State coach Steve Prohm said. “That’s terrible. But, my thing, I was trying to go see my wife, to be honest with you. It was a great moment. That’s part of college basketball. There’s a picture of when they beat Michigan a couple years ago here. … They beat Michigan and everybody rushed the floor.”

Other journalists were pretty upset about the ordeal, and directed their anger to the practice of court-storming/field-rushing, in general.

FWIW, Peterson clearly had a sense of humor about it. Probably because he is going to make bank suing ISU for letting this happen.

Let this be a lesson to everyone. Storming the court is awesome; you just might sacrifice the integrity of your fibula if you do it..

[via Des Moines Register]

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