Alert – March Madness fans horrified by obscene sniper player celebration in St John’s beat Omaha

March Madness viewers were left shocked on Thursday night after a St John’s player mimicked a sniper taking a shot at someone during his team’s win over Omaha.

It was a nervy start for St John’s, the second seed, falling 7-0 down against their 15-ranked opponents but they began to establish their dominance with five minutes to go in the first half.

When Simeon Wilcher drained a huge three-pointer to give Rick Pitino’s team a 28-22 lead, the CBS cameras cut to Wilcher’s teammate Brady Dunlap crawling on the floor, pretending to be a sniper taking a shot.

The clip immediately went viral on social media, with millions of fans tuned in across the country on a hugely anticipated day of college basketball.

‘This is called being professionally benched. Like 0.0% chance of playing,’ one fan wrote in response.

Another account shared the clip and captioned it: ‘This sniper celebration for St John’s is a little much.’

Brady Dunlap’s ‘sniper’ celebration in the St John’s win wasn’t to everyone’s taste

A different viewer took to X and wrote: ‘Love players being engaged on the bench. Don’t love the gun and sniper celebrations.’

A different March Madness fan, meanwhile, made the smart point that if Dunlap was playing in the NBA, he’d be in serious trouble, posting: ‘This is between a 15K-50K fine in the NBA.’

Gun celebrations usually get players fined at the top levels of sports across America.

In the NFL season that has just passed, Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Drake London appeared to celebrate a late game-winning touchdown against Philadelphia Eagles by pretending to fire a gun into the air.

The NFL, defining it as a ‘violent gesture’, fined him $14,000. London admitted he shouldn’t have done it, saying afterwards: ‘It was my first Monday Night Football game. I kind of lost myself in there. 

I wasn’t happy with the position I put my team in. There’s a lot of stuff going around in the world with gun violence that I don’t think I should have displayed there.

‘So, I’m not too happy with it and [you] probably won’t see that again from me.’

Dunlap didn’t play a minute in the game on Thursday. St John’s face Arkansas next, on Saturday night.