An Embarrasment For The Orange as Illinois Loses In First Round to WKU, 72-67

(Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)

You can say that Chester Frazier was injured. It's true, he was.

That does a lot to Illinois. It takes away possibly the best defensive player on the team, and one of the best in the Big Ten, no less.

It hurts their confidence, since Frazier is a natural born leader, and has a great ability to take control of the pace of the game when things get rough.

What it doesn't do is make the referees call a terrible game.

The Illini played decently. Considering that they were cold and coming off a three game losing streak, playing against a team that was on a seven game winning streak in Western Kentucky, they put up a good effort. They really did.

So why would I call this a black and white embarrassment?

The same reason I would've called it the same thing back in 2005, when Sean May and The Tar Heels got the same wonderful referee treatment in the title game of the NCAA tourney.

At least back then, they had a decent excuse. It was Sean May's birthday, so why not call a terrible game to give the victory to a less deserving team?

More importantly, if the NCAA referees had done it for a terrible reason before, why not do it for no reason at all a few years later?

Makes perfect sense to me.

Not surprisingly, it was kind of difficult to get the exact numbers on free throw shooting for the game. It wasn't difficult to see players falling over before they were even touched when defending the hoop, and offensive fouls being called for it. Whatever happened to letting the kids play?

However, lets be fair and look at those shooting numbers.

Western Kentucky got to take 21 free throw attempts, and only made 13.

The Fighting Illini were somehow only fouled seven times, and made five of their attempts.

Now, I know a lot of you college students out there just got back from break, and probably aren't wanting to do any math, so let me do it for you.

In a theoretically fair game, the free throw totals should be as close to even as possible. Granted, Illinois plays in the defensive heavy Big Ten, and it would seem that they get less leniency for fouls because of it, but...

If you make the seven free throw attempts by Illinois equal to the 21 of Western Kentucky, at the same pace they were making them, they'd have put down 15 free throw points.

Now, Western Kentucky won by four points. They made 13 points off of free throws. At their 13-21 ratio, if the game had been fairly officiated, how could would it have been?

If both teams got seven free throws, Western Kentucky would've made about four free throws, since you can't divide 13 and three evenly. Illinois would've gotten five.

So how does the rest of the scoring break down, then?

Well, without that, Western Kentucky already loses. It cuts off nine of their points, and the Fighting Illini win the game, 72-67.

Though it may not sound like it, I could've lived with Illinois losing this game, if it had just been a bit more fairly called. But it just didn't happen.

And every other article I've glanced so far has neglected to mention a key moment where the Illini got jipped just one more time, the one that may have changed it all.

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