Nevada's Jordan Caroline Punches Glass And Wolf Pack Staff Members Confront Cops In Postgame Tunnel Fracas

The student section at Utah State were understandably happy when the final buzzer went off to make their team’s 81-76 upset over No. 12 Nevada official and celebrated the occasion with an old-fashioned court storming. Unfortunately, the event might have been the impetus for something from the visiting team’s players and staff following the game.

A video captured by KUTV reporter Jake Edmonds shows Wolf Pack senior Jordan Caroline punching the glass covering a fire extinguisher before yelling “Fuck that! Run my shit, bitch! I’m right here n-!” down the hall, presumably towards someone on Utah State’s team. Teammates and staff had to help move Caroline down the hall to prevent further conflict.

After the camera panned to the scene of broken glass, it turned to capture Nevada coaches yelling at police officers about the students who rushed the court making contact with players and yelling profanities at them. As the cops continue to usher the remaining people down the hall, one of the staff members exclaims, “That’s unacceptable on your guys’ part. That’s your assistant coach!” Soon after, someone in a Wolf Pack polo turns to one of the officers and shouts, “They’re touching our fucking players, and you’re not going to do shit about it? You watched it happen! You watched it happen!”

Nevada apparently had to be escorted into the same hallway as Utah State because the students were in the way of the visiting team’s entrance to the locker rooms. The Associated Press reported that head coach Eric Musselman had to be restrained by police officers after going on an “expletive-laced tirade” outside of his team’s locker room. No one on the Wolf Pack was made available to media after the game.

We’re looking at two main accusations from Nevada’s side here. The first comes from what set off Caroline in the beginning of the video, which it seems we have an answer to. According to ESPN reporter Michael Eaves, a Utah State staff member yelled a profane insult at the player—presumably while the teams crossed paths in the tunnel—which corroborates what someone in the Nevada conglomerate was shouting about.

The second comes from what the staff members were yelling at police about when it came to fans making touching and insulting players as they rushed onto the court. Multiple angles of the court storming don’t really show a lot of contact between home fans and visiting players. A video that includes the final minute of action shows a couple fans yelling something at players, but not much else outside of that.

If you’ve never seen a court-storming before, it would appear as though arena officials and police didn’t do enough to separate the athletes and fans in a timely fashion, but it seemed like par for the course. Still, something was said on the court that made Nevada staff members react the way they did to police officers, it’s just not clear what.

The only response from Nevada so far was this statement released later on Saturday night:

“We are working with officials from the Mountain West Conference and Utah State to gather more information about the events that occurred this evening in Logan,” Nevada spokesperson Chad Hartley said late Saturday.