KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Deon Thomas has moved on.

That's important for the well being of Illinois' career leading scorer. Thomas has reason enough to be bitter this week of the Midwest Regional where all four teams (Auburn, Kentucky, Houston and North Carolina) are led by coaches with NCAA issues on their resume.  

The man who was once both Thomas' recruiter and tormentor has once again reached a career peak. Coach Bruce Pearl has led Auburn to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 16 years and for the first time in his career in 11 years.

This week, Pearl is once again being celebrated. Thomas, though, remembers Pearl as an aggressive Iowa assistant coach in 1989 who almost destroyed a young player's career.

It was Pearl who accused Illinois assistant Jimmy Collins of offering Thomas $80,000 and a car. Pearl recorded a conversation with Thomas that Pearl says confirms as much.

The NCAA investigated and found no evidence of Collins's alleged bribe. It did find three minor violations. Illinois was banned from the 1991 postseason. Thomas sat out his freshman year.

Illinois fans were incensed. Long before Pearl was the subject of an NCAA investigation at Tennessee, coaches in the industry back then suggested he had committed career suicide by attempting to rat out another school.

"It's just a basketball thing," Thomas told CBS Sports. "I'm sure you heard his apology to Jimmy Collins in New Orleans."

That would have been at the 2012 Final Four. 

"That same weekend, my wife and I bumped into Bruce. We had a conversation where he apologized," Thomas added. 'I was an overzealous young recruiter,' were the words he basically used.

"By that time, I'd pretty much forgiven him. I told him, 'Coach that was 20 years ago.' I'd moved on, he'd moved on. I wished him the best. He did the same for me."

In this Region of Rebound, all four coaches have recalibrated their careers. Call it tournament serendipity that has brought together Pearl and three of his peers, all major coaching figures who at one time were at least associated with some of most infamous NCAA basketball cases of this age.  

  • If not for Mario Chalmers's game-tying 3-pointer for Kansas in the 2008 national championship game, Memphis might have become the first Division I basketball program to have a championship vacated. As is stands, Kentucky's John Calipari has had two Final Four appearances vacated while coaching UMass and Memphis due to NCAA infractions. No, his name didn't appear in either NCAA infractions report at those schools but he was the head of a program that had to take banners down. Calm down, Big Blue Nation. Yes, Cal today is one of the most successful, influential and, yes, respected coaches in the game.

  • More than a decade ago, current Houston coach Kelvin Sampson was found to have made hundreds of impermissible phone calls to recruits at both Oklahoma and Indiana. His NCAA punishment after leaving Indiana remains outrageously unfair: a five-year show cause penalty that effectively banished Sampson from college basketball. Even worse, the conduct that put his schools on probation is now allowed by NCAA rules.

  • North Carolina's Roy Williams was cited by the NCAA at Kansas in 2006. Some of his players who had completed their eligibility were receiving benefits from boosters. The extra benefits came in the form of small checks mailed to the players to help them get started in the "real world." Williams claimed he checked with Kansas compliance that such a practice was allowable. From the NCAA: "Neither individual who worked in the compliance office … recalled ever having such a conversation with the former head men's basketball coach."

    "Seeing the headlines about rips your guts out," Williams said at the time. Williams is also blamed by scores more for being the head coach during what many consider the largest academic fraud scandal in history. He was never implicated in any wrongdoing regarding that case.

  • Pearl's issues at Iowa paled in comparison to his later transgressions. He was fired by Tennessee in 2011 for lying to NCAA investigators looking into a cookout for high school recruits at his house. Pearl had already served an eight-game suspension that season.

    Pearl was handed a three-year show-cause penalty.

    Irritated about a question referring to that time Pearl said last week, "I started coaching in 1982, and what year is it now, 2019? And like I was only out of coaching for three years. So I basically have been coaching my whole life. And so you're going to ask me a question about the three years I wasn't coaching?"

Well, yes. Their unsavory pasts are going to stick to these coaches as do their win-loss records. That's why it's the Region of Rebound.

The four have proven over and over again they can coach their butts off. Winning percentage conquers all. Pearl has done at Auburn what he did at Tennessee, make a sleepy program relevant again.

The Tigers play with the brashness their coach projects. That makes both subjects entertaining as hell.

"When you have a coach who is winning -- albeit it may not be the way people think he should be winning --  nonetheless … sometimes that eclipses some of the other things that go with it," Thomas said.

"When your fan base is happy and you're bringing in enough revenue, like I said, short memory. You get amnesia really quickly."

With the Sweet 16 looming, the success tends to overshadow … everything. Two days before the NCAA Tournament, Auburn assistant Chuck Person pleaded guilty to charges he had accepted bribes in the ongoing FBI probe. Another assistant, Ira Bowman, was suspended as part of ongoing admissions bribery scandal. Bowman once coached at Penn.

Despite his brush with Pearl, Thomas is on his way to being inducted in the Illinois athletics hall of game. He played 14 years overseas, meeting his wife in the process.

Currently, Thomas, 48, is an analyst for the Fighting Illini Sports Network and works for the Big Ten Network.

Life is good. The past is ancient.

"I'm not going to say [forgiveness for Pearl] was something that happened quickly, or it happened overnight because it wasn't," Thomas said. "I eventually got to that place."