NCAA victory prompts large celebration at Castle Court

NCAA victory prompts large celebration at Castle Court

Crowds of students partied in the vacant lot Sunday evening after the Orange advanced to the Sweet 16.
Published: March 22, 2021
Students gather at Castle Court after SU men's basketball wins against WVU, putting them in the Sweet Sixteen on March 21, 2021
Students gather at Castle Court after SU men's basketball wins against WVU, putting them in the Sweet Sixteen.

Over 100 people gathered last night at Castle Court and Walnut Park following wins from the Syracuse University men’s and women’s basketball teams in the NCAA tournament.

Groups of students walked and drove to the area before the Syracuse Police Department responded to reports of a large gathering of a couple hundred people around 8:30 p.m., according to SPD spokesman Sgt. Matthew Malinowski.

Malinowski said SPD was deployed to the corner of Walnut Place and Walnut Avenue and Harrison Street, and were able to successfully disperse the crowd. No individuals at the gathering were ticketed, he said.

The gathering was a violation of the university’s Stay Safe Pledge, which requires students to socially distance, limit gatherings and wear a mask.

“We appreciate our students are excited about our basketball teams’ wins tonight in their respective NCAA tournaments. However, now is not the time to let our guard down nor is it acceptable for our students to willfully disregard public health guidelines and the Stay Safe Pledge,” Sarah Scalese, senior associate vice president for communications, said in a statement. “We implore our students to act and celebrate responsibly.”

This type of gathering is not the first of its kind—earlier in the school year, maskless students gathered on the quad and at parties off campus, prompting repercussions from the university.

SU men’s basketball defeated no. 3 West Virginia University 75-72 Sunday evening, advancing them into the tournament’s Sweet 16 round. SU’s no. 8 women’s basketball defeated no. 9 South Dakota State University 72-55 in the first round of the NCAA women’s tournament.

The large gatherings come as SU is tracking an emerging COVID-19 cluster in a number of Main Campus residence halls. As of Sunday there were zero new cases of the virus with 92 positive cases in central New York and 275 students in quarantine.