Don't Put Me In, Coach: My Incredible NCAA Journey From the End of the Bench to the End of the Bench

by Mark Titus

  Since Coach Matta made all the basketball players live on the same floor of the same dorm (upperclassmen included), we basically spent every second of every day together, which made it that much easier for us to build our chemistry even more. (This also made things a lot easier for the groupies, since they could just move one room over after their services were no longer needed in the original room they visited.) This might come as a surprise to some, but because we were athletes, Ohio State hooked us up and put us in a dorm that typically housed graduate students, which is to say that it wasn’t like all the other dorms on campus in that every unit had its own bathroom, kitchen, and living room to go along with the bedroom. The upperclassmen were given individual units, but the freshmen weren’t as lucky. The four freshmen who were actually recruited to play basketball at OSU all shared the same kitchen and living room, but their dorm came with two bathrooms and each guy got his own bedroom.

  I, on the other hand, was at the bottom of the totem pole and therefore had to share every room with my roommate, who, like me, was also a longtime friend of Greg and Mike and had used his relationship with them to become a manager for the basketball team. (Our dorm was still better than what every other freshman had on campus, so I can’t complain too much.) Anyway, because the four other freshmen all had full-ride scholarships and essentially were given unlimited money from the school to spend on food, and I was a walk-on who had to pay for everything out of my (parents’) own pocket, I developed a Robin Hood mentality and frequently raided their fridge and food pantry whenever they were gone. (For reasons still unknown to me, they never locked their door when they left.) Looking back, I have no idea why I kept trying to swipe food from them when all they usually ever had in their dorm was orange soda, Sour Skittles, and hot sauce, but I guess that just goes to show how dire my financial situation really was.

  After a few months of stealing food that I didn’t even like, I got a pleasant surprise when I found over half of a large pizza in the fridge one day, figured that would be my dinner for the evening, and decided to take the entire box back to my room. (Yeah, I know stealing food like that is a dick move, but I rationalized it by convincing myself that I was pulling a prank on them. It made sense to me at the time.) But as I took a few steps out of the kitchen and toward their front door, Greg came out of his bedroom and caught me red-handed. Before I could utter a word, he turned back to his room and yelled, “Aw hell naw! You’re a dead man!” I looked down at the box, saw Greg’s name written on it, and instantly realized he was going back to his room to get his Nerf gun. Yes, you read that right—his Nerf gun.

  You see, Greg carried this Nerf gun with him pretty much everywhere he went and would shoot guys on the team with it whenever he felt we were out of line. He thought of himself as the leader of our team and felt it was his duty to keep everyone under control, which he apparently thought could best be accomplished with help from a children’s toy. The “bullets” of the gun were Styrofoam darts with suction cups attached to the ends, but after Greg got drunk with power and started shooting people for no reason in particular, it got annoying real fast.

  Anybody who has a son or has babysat a toddler boy knows what I’m talking about. Sure it doesn’t hurt, but it only takes one instance of having a dart suctioned to your forehead because Greg/the toddler came out of nowhere and shot you in the face while you were trying to watch TV for that damn Nerf gun to piss you off. Well, I reached my boiling point with him and his Nerf gun when that exact thing happened to me. He quickly figured out how much I hated that thing and decided to annoy me with it even more. (I would’ve done the exact same thing if I were him, so I can’t really blame him.) The Nerf gun was my nemesis and he knew it. This is why I had no doubt in my mind what he was doing when he headed back to his room.

  I shot out of their dorm with pizza in hand and Greg and his Nerf gun on my heels. As I was running down the hallway back to my room, I dropped the pizza on the floor for no other reason than I was trying to use the same strategy that those bad guys use in movies when they create an obstacle/diversion by tipping over trash cans as the cops are chasing them through an alley. This was a terrible idea and in no way worked like I thought it would. Undaunted, I continued my sprint toward my dorm, busted open my door, and made a beeline for my bathroom. After months of regularly eating whatever it was Ohio State’s cafeterias tried to pass off as food, this was a procedure I had rehearsed many times before, and all that practice helped me gain a little ground on Greg. Right as Greg followed my trail and came through the front door of my dorm, I stepped into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind me to lock him out.

  In an act of desperation, Greg shot a dart at me before I could get the door all the way closed, but he missed and the dart ended up in the bathroom with me. I knew Greg wouldn’t mind waiting it out, and I knew as soon as I opened the bathroom door I’d be faced with a barrage of darts, so it was clear to me that my only way out was to do something so drastic it would cause a ceasefire. In other words, my only choice was to suction that dart I had with me to my nuts.

  I unzipped the fly of my jeans and let my boys breathe, and then put a little water on the suction cup of the dart to make it stick to my sack. With my nads hanging out of the fly of my jeans and the dart solidly latched onto them, I opened the door and told Greg if he wanted his dart back he’d have to grab it himself. He was so appalled at the sight of one of his darts fastened to my junk that he lowered his gun and admitted defeat. And with that, I had achieved the impossible: I killed Greg’s desire to use his beloved Nerf gun.

  After I eventually removed the dart and put my testes back in my pants, Greg and I laughed off the incident and watched some TV. Five minutes later, when whatever show we were watching went to commercial, Greg grabbed his Nerf gun and asked, “How many darts do you think I can get stuck to the TV?” I told him there was no way he could get five of the six darts to stick on the TV screen because the suction cups on the darts didn’t work very well, to which he simply replied, “You’re on.”

  He gathered all of his darts, made them all point the same direction, bunched them up in his fist, and ran his tongue over each and every one of them to improve their suction. I decided to wait for him to finishing licking the darts before I reminded him that one of them had just been attached to my scrotum, and once I did, he tried to convince me that that particular dart wasn’t in his hand. But when he looked down and saw that he was holding all six darts, he realized that he couldn’t deny the truth any longer.

  Greg dropped the darts in horror and disgust, stormed out of my room, and never once tried to shoot me with his Nerf gun again after that. As great as my initial victory was, the fact that he took it to another level by licking the dart that was attached to my scrotum made the victory that much sweeter (which is funny because judging from the look on Greg’s face, my nutsack was actually really, really salty).

  What that story has to do with the team chemistry concept I was originally talking about in this chapter I’m not sure, but does it really matter? Greg Oden indirectly licked my balls. Don’t act like you won’t think about this story every time someone brings up Greg’s name in conversation or you see him on TV, which was pretty much my only motivation in telling the story in the first place. Besides, the prank war that was ignited between us shortly thereafter had to have helped our team chemistry somehow, even if it was entirely one-sided and basically consisted of me being a dick by putting a bunch of packing peanuts under his bedsheets or hiding an alarm clock set for 4:00 a.m. in his room and him not really retaliating at all. (Some would argue that he was just being nice, but I subscribe to the theory that he wasn’t creative enough to think of any good ways to get me back—either that or he was too busy being the most dominant center in college basketball in over a decade.)

  Nonetheless, whether Mike was in my room playing me in H-O-R-S-E on the little goal attached to my door, or Kyle Madsen was begging me to do his math homework for him, or Daequan, Jamar, and Ivan
Harris were trying to get me to serve as the judge in their debate concerning who “gets with the baddest bitches,” there was always something going on at the dorm to keep me entertained. And while it got exhausting at times to have to be around the same people all day every day, I’m glad we all lived on the same floor because I seriously do think that our team’s collective camaraderie was that much better because of it.

  NINE

  Following our domination of the BCA Classic, we took care of business in home games against Eastern Kentucky and the two-time national champion San Francisco Dons, who everyone knows as the alma mater of NBA great Bill Russell but very few people know as the alma mater of NBA not-as-great Bill Cartwright. After playing the Dons, our next game was against Youngstown State, which I thought was an interesting coincidence considering that a “don” is obviously a mob boss and Youngstown is sometimes affectionately referred to as “Murdertown, USA” because of its history of car bombings orchestrated by the Mafia. So there was that. Anyway, the game was played at Nationwide Arena in downtown Columbus because our on-campus arena was probably hosting a Hanson concert or something else much more important than a college basketball game.

  Luckily, this didn’t affect fan attendance all that much—there was still a great turnout for the game, if for no other reason than that, after years of futility from the Columbus Bluejackets, the people of Columbus were finally excited to actually see a good local team play in Nationwide Arena. Either way, the game was a complete blowout and was pretty much over from the start, which is to say that I knew before the game that I had a pretty good chance of playing. And I was right.

  With a minute left and us up by about 30, I checked into the game and did a quick stretch to help prevent my ice-cold hamstrings from exploding. Since I had played in a handful of games before this one and, as you know, already had two career points to my name, I wasn’t nervous this time around and was instead actually pretty excited to get in the game because, after missing my first career three-point attempt in the San Francisco game, I was anxious to redeem myself and get my first three under my belt. I wasted no time doing just that.

  Following a missed shot by Youngstown State just a few seconds after I checked in, I put my head down and sprinted back toward our basket to spot up by the three-point line. But before I could get completely set, Jamar threw a pass to me while I was in midstride and messed up my rhythm. Instead of making the smart basketball decision and collecting myself before shooting, I was so desperate to score that I just caught the ball, turned my body toward the rim, and let a shot fly, all in one motion, even though I didn’t really know how far away I was from the goal until right as the ball was leaving my hands. That ultimately didn’t matter because, by some act of God, I made it. When the ball went through the rim, the crowd went crazy and my adrenaline took over as I sprinted back on defense because I was so excited.

  After I got situated on defense, though, I looked into the stands and noticed that of the 17,000 people who were there for the first half, maybe a couple thousand had stuck around until the end of the game. What’s worse, I realized that the only reason the people cheered so loudly when I scored was because they thought it was cute in a Jason McElwain sort of way that someone as bad as me could actually put the ball in the basket instead of tripping over his own feet like they expected. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the over-the-top cheering, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. The fact of the matter was that I really wasn’t anything but a novelty human victory cigar to Ohio State fans, and that was just the way it was going to be for the rest of my career. I can’t overstate how big of a wake-up call this was for me, as it reshaped how I viewed my role as walk-on for the rest of my four-year career.

  After my three polished off our dismantling of Youngstown State, we took our show on the road for the first time and played sixth-ranked North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Even though we had vaulted to a number-one ranking shortly after the Youngstown State game, North Carolina was actually favored, not only because they were playing at home, but also because our star center was out with a wrist injury while their star center, Tyler Hansbrough, was the Tim Tebow of college basketball (which is my way of saying that he was portrayed as the greatest college basketball player of all time in the history of the world ever).

  Heading into the game, everyone knew this would be our first big test of the season, including Coach Matta, which is why he organized an impromptu film session the night before the game. Now, our typical routine was to watch film the night before every game, so that part wasn’t unusual, but when a few managers knocked on our hotel room doors and told us to meet in a conference room downstairs for film in five minutes, we could sense a sincerity surrounding this film session that wasn’t there when we prepared for our first six games.

  When we walked into the conference room, we were greeted with dim lights and a blank projector screen surrounded by all of the coaches. Once the players got situated, Coach Matta stood up and with a serious look on his face said, “I don’t need to tell you how big tomorrow’s game is. This is no doubt a great test for this basketball team, but you gotta believe me when I tell you that the game will be won between the ears. Understanding what North Carolina is going to try to do is essential to our success, so pay attention and don’t be afraid to ask questions.” He then sat down and pushed Play while the rest of us focused our attention on the screen.

  Instead of clips of North Carolina, though, the projector showed the legendary meatloaf scene from Wedding Crashers, when Owen Wilson’s character meets Will Ferrell’s character, Chaz, at Chaz’s house. Being the huge Will Ferrell fan that he is, Coach Matta thought that showing this clip would be an effective way to keep the team loose, and judging from the fact that the entire room burst into laughter when Will Ferrell stepped out from the shadows with nunchucks around his neck and said, “What the fuck do you want?” to Owen Wilson, I’d say that he got exactly what he was after. (Yes, we watched actual game tape of UNC after that.)

  Fast-forward to the next night when, ten minutes before the tip-off, our team gathered in the locker room for one last pep talk. This meeting typically never lasted much longer than a couple minutes and usually consisted of Coach Matta going over strategy one last time before saying a few encouraging words to get us pumped up. But this time around we sat silently in the locker room without having any idea where Coach Matta even was.

  With less than five minutes until tip-off, the door opened and Coach Matta slowly walked in holding each end of the towel that he had draped around his neck. He calmly made his way to the front of the room, stood pat, and only moved when he turned his head to look each and every player square in the eye. While I can’t speak for everyone, I can say that the serious look on Coach Matta’s face made me more than a little nervous about what he was going to do.

  Finally, after a few beats of silence, Coach Matta finished staring down all the players and opened his mouth for the first time to say, “What the fuck do you want?” in the exact tone Will Ferrell used in Wedding Crashers. The entire locker room lost it. To this day I think this was Coach Matta’s finest moment in coaching. After the laughter subsided, he just said, “All I want from you guys tonight is to just go out there and have fun. All right, now bring it in for the real thing.”

  It was quite possibly the greatest pregame speech in the history of coaching and no doubt helped calm the nerves of our freshman-laden team. And even though we ultimately came up a little short and lost the game by nine, pretty much every college basketball fan around the country agreed that giving the sixth-ranked team a run for their money on their home court without our best player was a sign that we were going to be a team to be reckoned with once we got Greg back.

  TEN

  Despite initially being told that he wouldn’t be able to play until January 1, Greg was given the okay by team doctors a month early and made his debut in our next game against Valparaiso on December 2. As bad as this news was for Valpo pl
ayers and fans, it was good news for Kyle Madsen, who had transferred to Ohio State from Vanderbilt in the off-season and was relatively shy and timid because he was still trying to figure out how he fit in with his new teammates. Since he had just transferred and was therefore ineligible to play for the entire season per NCAA rules, Kyle had been given the assignment of playing Greg one-on-one on the side court every day in practice until Greg was cleared to scrimmage with the rest of the team, which was a role that basically just consisted of Kyle getting violently (and often hilariously) dunked on over and over again. So when Greg finally healed up and led us to an easy victory against Valpo, and consequently let Kyle off the hook for the rest of the season, well, I guess you could say Kyle was slightly pleased.

  After Valpo, we rattled off three more blowout wins against Cleveland State, Cincinnati, and Iowa State to improve our record to 10–1. While all three of these games were largely uneventful, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Cincinnati game was played just a few miles from my hometown right outside of Indianapolis and, even though I got to play in the final minute, the block of people from my hometown who had been chanting my name all night didn’t get the chance to see me do anything of any importance on the court because the other walk-on on our team, Danny Peters, followed in Daequan’s AAU footsteps by airballing a shot instead of passing it to me. (Consider this my retribution, Danny.) But alas, we got the win and that’s all that matters (or whatever other cliché phrase athletes use when they’re secretly pissed at a teammate but don’t want the public to know). In fact, that win and the victory over Iowa State gave us four straight wins and helped us climb back up to third in the polls, setting up a top-five matchup in our next game against the fourth-ranked defending national champion Florida Gators.