{"id":119836,"date":"2025-08-30T02:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T02:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/119836\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T02:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T02:32:08","slug":"illinois-basketball-greats-of-2005-gather-for-sweet-reunion-championship-regrets-aside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/119836\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois basketball greats of 2005 gather for sweet reunion, championship regrets aside"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHAMPAIGN \u2014 Anybody who watched Illinois basketball<\/a> great Dee Brown do his thing 20 years ago already knows which one day he\u2019d take back if he could.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one that\u2019s going to haunt you forever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The one with every damn thing on the line, the national championship game against blue-blood North Carolina. Those Illini \u2014 still the Big Ten\u2019s best team since Michigan State won it all in 2000 \u2014 fell 75-70 for only their second loss of a record-tying 37-win season.<\/p>\n

Powered by the unmatched guard trio of Brown, Deron Williams and Luther Head, the Illini started 29-0 before finally losing \u2014 by a measly point \u2014 on a late three-point shot at Ohio State in the regular-season finale. Ranked No. 1 for over three months, they romped to Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, led the nation in assists, nailed the second-most threes, were as efficient on defense as they were on offense and, you\u2019d better believe it, became the closest thing to rock stars as there were in college basketball.<\/p>\n

The fun never stopped \u2026 until it did against the Tar Heels on April 4, 2005, in St. Louis.<\/p>\n

The \u201cbig-boy trophy,\u201d as Brown calls it, was supposed to have gone to the good guys in orange. They\u2019d already accomplished every other imaginable goal, often in spectacular fashion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was checking all the boxes, but I didn\u2019t check the last one when we got down to winning it all,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt happens, but it\u2019s something you think about a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than enough sometimes, especially on a night like Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be sad today,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to be as happy as I can. [But] people don\u2019t want to let that die down. They want to keep drilling you on it and keep telling you and reminding you, which is fine. We had a chance to win a national championship, so that was a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another blessing came at Memorial Stadium, where Illinois\u2019 back-to-back Big Ten championship basketball teams of 2003-04 and 2004-05 gathered for a reunion before the No. 12-ranked football team\u2019s season opener against Western Illinois. According to Brown, it was the first time they\u2019d all been together since their college days. Head, the team\u2019s leading scorer, couldn\u2019t make it, but Brown, Williams, James Augustine, Roger Powell Jr., coach Bruce Weber and many others \u2014 among them current Illini coach Brad Underwood \u2014 were on hand, with family present in abundance.<\/p>\n

This was no solemn occasion. Quite the opposite.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were some of the funnest years of my life, for sure,\u201d said Williams, who went on to become a three-time All-Star in the NBA. \u201cThe friendships, the camaraderie that we had here, we had something special. It\u2019s hard to top those years.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Williams could live another day as an Illini, there wouldn\u2019t even be a game on the court. He\u2019d just sit around with Brown, Head and Jerrance Howard, \u201ctalk [expletive]\u201d and play cards like they used to.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the court, it was fun, man,\u201d Williams said, \u201cbut off the court, it was just as fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weber still marvels at a coaching experience he calls \u201cjust amazing.\u201d Shortly before she died in March of 2005 \u2014 while the Big Ten tournament was going on \u2014 Weber\u2019s dear mother, Dawn, put it even better when she told him the season had been \u201clike a fairy tale.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The loss at the end still gnaws at Weber sometimes, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we were the better team,\u201d he said. \u201cI always wish [Augustine] wouldn\u2019t have had all the foul trouble. Obviously, a lot of people talk about the officials. I try not to complain about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, he tries. Most of the time. But Augustine, an excellent big man, fouled out in nine minutes of action in the title game, and where was the justice in that? The Illini fan who long ago mailed Weber a photo of a toilet sure wasn\u2019t OK with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn her letter, she wrote, \u2018Look at the toilet closer,\u2019 \u201d Weber recalled, laughing. \u201cThere was a gold plaque with the names of the three officials on the toilet. She said, \u2018Every time I you-know-what, I think of those three.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Augustine had no problem reflecting on a night that wasn\u2019t exactly on the list of his favorites.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the beginning, it was kind of difficult to get over,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the best time of your life, where you\u2019re in the biggest game and you foul out.\u201d<\/p>\n

He can smile about it now. Although, in full disclosure, \u201cI\u2019ve never watched a North Carolina game again,\u201d Augustine added.<\/p>\n

Augustine, Williams and Brown (Proviso East) are all 41 now. Head, an ex-Public League star (Manley) who had a decent run of it in the NBA, is 42. Weber, no longer coaching, is 68. Where does the time go?<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago in St. Louis, the Illini erased a 40-27 halftime deficit and had glory in their sights. It was a 70-70 game with a couple of minutes to go. Williams had two shots at the lead. Head had another, plus a shot to tie it at 73 a bit later. None of those four shots went down. These things happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertain chances come only once in a lifetime,\u201d the Sun-Times\u2019 Rick Telander wrote that night. \u201cYou can never take them again. And you just live with what could have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was as great a time as there has been for Illinois basketball. Better times for newspapers, too. I dug through the archives for Sun-Times stories from that Final Four and lost count at eight different writers\u2019 bylines. Or maybe it was nine. Mind-blowing, either way.<\/p>\n

Brown is coach at Roosevelt University these days.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the best thing ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost. Brown still dreams about hooping inside Assembly Hall, now called State Farm Center, but not by him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think about that place and what it sounds like,\u201d he said. \u201cYou ask me what I miss? I miss the sound of that place. It made me feel like I couldn\u2019t lose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHAMPAIGN \u2014 Anybody who watched Illinois basketball great Dee Brown do his thing 20 years ago already knows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":["post-119836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}