30 biggest college basketball scandals of all time

14. St. Bonaventure plays with an ineligible player

Finding talent is never easy in college basketball, especially if you’re a mid-major school. The transfer market is often key to helping these smaller schools find undervalued talent, but it would help if these players are actually eligible to play.

St. Bonaventure, a small school in upstate New York that plays in the Atlantic 10, learned this the hard way in 2003. Head coach Jan van Breda Kolff was looking for a big man to complete his roster, and he found one in Jamil Terrell, a 6’8″ forward from a junior college in Georgia.

Terrell had a ton of talent, but there was one problem: he didn’t actually earn a degree from his previous school. The coursework that Terrell took had helped him earn a welding certificate, not the associate’s degree that NCAA regulations required for athletes to be eligible to play at the D-I level.

St. Bonaventure proceeded to recruit Terrell anyway and used him in 2003, and the NCAA came down hard on the program. The Bonnies were forced to forfeit every game that Terrell played in 2003, banned from the A-10 tournament, banned from postseason play the following year, and placed on probation for three years.

The scandal also led to a ton of carnage at the school. Van Breda Kolff, athletic director Gothard Lane, and president Robert Wickenheiser were all fired for their role in this incident, while the chairman of the school’s board of trustees took his own life out of shame for failing to prevent the scandal.