Scott Dochterman, writing in The Athletic, has a good story on the Big Ten Conference’s absence from NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship for the last 25 years. He not only writes about last year’s Purdue team running into UCONN, but also Michigan in 2018, Wisconsin in 2015, and others.

I was most intrigued by what he had to say about the 2005 Illinois team and he pulled a quote from Bruce Weber I had never heard before.

The officiating in the Illinois-North Carolina title game in 2005 was perhaps even more controversial. In what was considered an even matchup in the post between future NBA Draft picks, Illinois center James Augustine fouled out in nine minutes of action without scoring a point. His counterpart Sean May scored 26 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and earned the Final Four’s most outstanding player award.

“I still walk through O’Hare or Midway (airports) every week, and when somebody asks me about the game, most of it’s about the officials,” Weber said. “Our backup center (Jack Ingram) played the most minutes of his career in the national championship game and took an engineering exam during the day because his engineering professor didn’t care that it was the national championship. He was given the test in St. Louis.”

Rashad McCants took “bogus classes designed to keep athletes academically eligible” at North Carolina while Jack Ingram had to take an engineering exam on the day of the National Championship game. Unreal.