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

  “Well, Bru,” he said (he always called me “Bru” or “Brutus” because he thought I looked like Ohio State’s mascot—whatever that means), “looks like this is going to be our last game together.” After being teammates for the previous five years, I took this statement as Daequan’s way of telling me that he was going to go to the NBA instead of returning to Ohio State for his sophomore year. Forget the fact that I thought it was a bad decision for him to leave early. I was more concerned with him telling me about his decision 10 minutes before the National Championship game was set to tip off, which was a pretty good sign that he didn’t have his priorities lined up all that well.

  It’s okay, though, because he surprised everyone and played out of his mind once the game started. Wait, never mind. He actually scored two points and only played nine minutes because he screwed up on so many inbounds plays that his mental errors directly led to 10 Florida points and Coach Matta couldn’t risk playing him any more after that. Sorry about that mix-up.

  Other than Daequan not being mentally prepared for the game, the other fatal mistake our team made was Coach Matta’s decision to keep me on the bench. You see, right after the starting lineups were announced, I approached Coach Matta and explained to him that I had five fouls to give and they’d go to waste if I didn’t use them, so if he should need me to go in and violently foul Joakim Noah or Al Horford, just to send a message, I was more than ready. I mean, Temple coach John Chaney used this strategy against St. Joe’s in 2005 (when he infamously referred to his player as a “goon”—which makes it sound like the kid should’ve been playing for the Monstars), so it wouldn’t have been a completely unprecedented move. Nonetheless, Coach Matta just laughed and told me he’d “keep that in mind.” But here’s the thing: he didn’t keep it in mind. At all. In fact, I’m pretty sure he had his mind made up all along that he wasn’t going to play me. I’m not saying that this is why we lost, but then again, I’m not saying it’s not.

  After we lost by nine in a hard-fought game, I walked off the court with a hanging head as orange and blue confetti fell from the rafters and thousands of Florida fans did their Gator Chomp. We came so close to achieving something I had dreamed about my entire life, but we were stopped short by a team featuring a guy whose ponytail looked like a wad of pubes. It was, without a doubt, the most demoralizing feeling of my life.

  As I took one last look at the throngs of Gator fans cheering, I couldn’t help but think that our season wasn’t supposed to end this way. It felt like I was watching a terrible finish to an otherwise great sports movie. Like if Jimmy Chitwood airballed what would have been the game-winning shot, fell into a deep depression, and died a week later on his bedroom floor with an empty bottle of painkillers in one hand and a half-full bottle of Jack in the other. Or if the Giants were destroyed by the Cowboys in The Little Giants because Icebox realized she wasn’t a lesbian and decided to stay on the cheerleading team. Or if Rudy didn’t get to play in the last game because he was mouth-raped by the team captain in an act of hazing and decided to quit a month before.

  Yeah, that’s exactly what it felt like.

  I walked into the locker room, sat next to my locker, put my chin on my chest, and thought about what just happened. Everyone else on our team pretty much did the same thing. The collective mood was as somber as could be, and the silence was deafening. Coach Matta made the first move and gave a quick speech about how he had no regrets about the game, about how much he’d miss coaching our team, and how he’d remember that season for the rest of his life. We all “brought it in” and did that obligatory “team on three” thing that every sports team in the world does, then went back to sitting by our lockers in silence. Even though Coach Matta insisted that we “keep our heads up,” nobody was interested in what he had to say. This wasn’t a time for reflection. It was a time for pouting.

  The mood was so dismal that when I looked to my immediate right I noticed Danny had started to tear up. Under any other circumstances, he would have been berated by everyone on the team, but the truth is that we all felt like crying that night, even if our tears didn’t actually materialize. For most of us, losing the National Championship wasn’t what was so upsetting. No, what really made us so emotional was knowing that, because of graduation and a few guys leaving early for the NBA, our close-knit group would never get to all play together or regularly hang out ever again. Every one of us had the time of our lives that season, and now it had all come to an end. And so, we all just sat still, blankly stared at nothing in particular, and felt sorry for ourselves.

  Even when the coaches and staff left the locker room, we remained frozen next to our lockers, unsure of when or if the time would come where we would feel like getting up. After what felt like an eternity, Greg saw Danny crying from across the room and stood up from his chair. As the leader of our team and really the only reason our game with Florida was relatively close, Greg apparently felt obligated to come talk to Danny to try to console him. He walked toward Danny and me with the same dejected look on his face that all of us had. When he reached us, he pulled up a chair, sat next to Danny, and put his arm around him. Then he said something to Danny that is the best advice I’ve ever heard in my life:

  “It’s only a game. Stop crying like a little bitch.”

  In the end, Florida was one of the best college basketball teams ever and was certainly the best team in the past 15 years, so it’s hard to get too upset about the loss now. But in that moment, I’d never been more upset about something that didn’t involve death or my junior high girlfriend refusing to show me her boobs. Not only had we come so close to achieving a dream, but now our season was over and consequently the brotherhood we all had was pretty much over, not to mention the fact that I’m pretty confident our team would’ve easily won the National Championship in just about any other year. Wow, never mind—I guess that really is depressing to still think about. Let’s just move on.

  About a week after we lost the National Championship, we held a rally for Ohio State fans at our arena that looked back on one of the best seasons of Ohio State basketball ever and gave people a chance to say good-bye to Greg and the seniors (and, of course, Daequan). Even though everyone had a pretty good idea that Greg was going to go to the NBA, Ohio State fans figured it was at least worth a shot to try to persuade him to stay. As the team was introduced, the few thousand people in the stands burst into a “One more year!” chant that drowned out whatever was being said by whoever had the microphone. Once the chanting subsided, the interview portion of the rally started, with Danny and me as the first players interviewed.

  Ohio State basketball legends Bill Hosket and Ronnie Stokes conducted the interview, and since the entire thing was scripted, I knew going in that these two guys were just going to toss us one or two questions so they could quickly get to interviewing the good players without making us feel left out. Hosket said, “Both of you guys started the season in a unique way, as team managers. And then obviously became an integral part of this basketball team.” I still can’t tell if this was meant to be a joke—for his sake, I hope it was. “Tell us a little bit about that transition.”

  Danny and I had already planned for me to field the first question, so I leaned into the microphone and went for it: “First I’d just like to make an announcement real quick. I hear the fans chanting, ‘One more year,’ and I just wanted everyone to know that after sitting down with my family … we’ve decided that I’ll be back next year!”

  I stood up and waved to the crowd as they ripped into a perfect combination of applause and laughter for 10 to 15 seconds. The next day all sorts of articles appeared online and in our local newspaper about the pep rally, and I was the focal point of seemingly every one of them. Everywhere I went for the next week I was recognized as that basketball walk-on who said he’d be coming back for his sophomore season. My announcement received infinitely more attention than I ever anticipated it would, and the people of Columbus and the Ohio State fans were eat
ing it up.

  And just like that, my “legend” was born.

  PART THREE

  I was going to vote (in the 2008 presidential election), but it was raining and I was wearing new Jordans.

  —Danny Peters, my teammate from 2006 to 2010

  FOURTEEN

  I don’t mean to come across as a philosophical hippie or something, but I like to think that the world is a perfectly balanced place that always finds a way to restore its balance should it ever be disturbed. The way I see it, just about everything in life has a built-in punishment for when things are taken too far and enjoyed in excess. In other words, with respect to Daryle Singletary, I actually do believe it’s possible to have too much fun and bad things happen when that “fun threshold” is reached. (By the way, if you are one of the nine people who got that Daryle Singletary reference, pat yourself on the back for being such a die-hard fan of the greatest genre of music of all time—’90s country.)

  For example, if you eat too much, you’ll get fat. If you have too much sex, you’ll most likely get an STD or an unwanted pregnancy. If you drink too much alcohol, you’ll either vomit or go home with a fugly chick that you’ll regret in the morning. And if you are attracted to a girl just a little too much, and you stand in the shrubs just outside of her house with your pants at your ankles and watch her every move through her living room window, you’ll most likely go to jail or at the very least get a restraining order slapped on you. (Some chicks just can’t appreciate a true gentlemanly gesture.)

  In my case, I was having too much fun with basketball. In my first year of college, I lucked my way onto a Big Ten basketball team, I lucked my way into a scholarship (I forgot to mention that the basketball program had extra full-ride scholarships, so they gave me one that would’ve otherwise gone to waste), and I lucked my way into a front-row seat to one of the more thrilling NCAA Tournament runs in history that culminated in a trip to the Final Four and a shot at the National Championship.

  In a single season I had been able to do things that most people—even most Division I basketball players—would never have the opportunity to do. Quite simply, things were too good to be true for me, and my world needed to balance itself out and somehow bring me back down to earth. But, you might be asking, with the exception of being kicked off the team, what could possibly bring you down from the high that must have came from going to the Final Four with your childhood friends? Answer: Evan “The Villain” Turner, that’s what.

  After my magical freshman season ended with us coming up just a little short against Florida in the National Championship, the only three guys at Ohio State I had known before I enrolled at the school (Greg, Mike, and Daequan) all chose to forgo their final three years of eligibility and enter the NBA draft. For Mike and Greg, this was a pretty obvious decision—the “draft stock” for both guys was as high as it was ever going to be after they both played out of their minds throughout the NCAA Tournament. And while I originally thought that Daequan, who was our sixth man and averaged only 10 points per game, was crazy for leaving early, I changed my mind after I found in his dorm a five-page paper he had written for a class that had a big red “0%” at the top of it and a note from his professor on the back page that read, “It’s obvious that you didn’t read the book and had no understanding of what was expected with this assignment. Your entire paper discusses things that are irrelevant for this assignment and this class. Please come to my office sometime this week.”

  I still can’t believe the professor dropped the ball on a perfect opportunity to quote Billy Madison: “What you have just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in the English department is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” But I digress. What I’m trying to say here is, Daequan wasn’t exactly suited for higher education and it was probably a good idea for him to enter the workforce as soon as he possibly could.

  When those guys left, not only did I lose a few friends, but I also lost my security blanket. I was comfortable busting my teammates’ balls throughout my freshman year because I was friends with the two best players on the team and figured that was enough to get me a free pass. In no way was this true (I got a “free pass” because my teammates were laid back), but it didn’t matter because that’s how I thought. So when those three guys left, I initially kept to myself and tried to figure out how I fit in with my new team.

  The combination of isolating myself in the locker room, being the only guy on the team who didn’t live in the dorm (I had a one-bedroom apartment five miles off campus), and being kind of antisocial to begin with took its toll. Instead of going out with some of the guys on the team after practices, most nights I’d lock myself in my apartment, stare into a mirror, and remind myself that I was a loser with no friends. (I wish I was joking.) After a few months of this, my mom finally got through to me and convinced me to try to “start being yourself again.” I gave her advice some thought and realized she was right—I needed to go back to doing the things that made my freshman year so awesome, even if my old friends weren’t around anymore. Thus, the next day at practice I went back to being my old self by finding ways to pick on the freshmen on our team, which was a group that included a guy by the name of Evan Turner.

  Other than Evan, the freshmen on our team during my sophomore season were Jon Diebler, Dallas Lauderdale, Kosta Koufos, and Eric Wallace. And while I made fun of every one of them pretty much every day, Evan was by far my favorite target because he made it incredibly easy to get under his skin. When I made fun of Jon for looking like McLovin and being pigeon-toed, he laughed about it and made fun of me for having a muffin top. When I made fun of Dallas for wearing a neon-green undershirt with a brown hoodie for a week straight, he took it as a compliment. When I made fun of Kosta for sticking his chest out and looking at himself in the mirror when we lifted weights, well, he didn’t pay attention to me because he was too busy sticking his chest out and looking at himself in the mirror. And when I made fun of Eric for being even more socially awkward than I was, he wouldn’t say anything and would just smile and give me a high-five before walking away.

  None of those guys ever got too worked up over anything I said because they knew it was just all in good fun. But Evan was different. How was he different, you ask? Put it this way: you know how after your Little League baseball games everyone would ride in the back of a pickup truck to Dairy Queen and your coach would deliver bad news by telling you that you were only allowed to spend two dollars each? If you answered no, I weep for your deprived childhood. But if you answered yes, you surely remember how the cool kids would pool their money together and get a Treatzza Pizza that they’d split three ways. And how the not as cool yet still perfectly normal kids would just get an ice cream cone, a couple of Dilly Bars, or a Peanut Buster Parfait, or whatever. Well, Evan was like that one doucher little kid in the group who spent his money on a Mr. f’ingMisty and a small order of fries. I trust you now have a solid understanding of just how weird Evan was.

  When Evan came to Ohio State, he had a huge chip on his shoulder and his mind made up that everyone was trying to either piss him off or keep him from playing in the NBA. In his defense, I eventually did make it my goal to try to piss him off every day, but that wasn’t until a couple years later, so there was no real excuse for his initial paranoia. But whatever the case, from the moment he set foot on campus he was the epitome of a guy who couldn’t take a joke.

  So when I decided that it was time for me to “start being myself again,” Evan didn’t take too kindly to any jokes I made at his expense. Being the asshole that I am, I took his reactions as an open invitation to make him a target until he learned to lighten up and realize that his teammates had his back and wanted the team to be just as successful as he did. This only added fuel to fire and led to Evan and me becoming swor
n enemies. We butted heads for the better part of three years, and by the time our tenure as teammates was eventually through, Evan had tried to fight me no less than three times and actually threw punches on one of those occasions.

  FIFTEEN

  If you were to ask any of the guys on the 2007–2008 Ohio State men’s basketball team what the feeling in the locker room was like in the months leading up to the start of the season, my guess is that every one of them would tell you that an obvious schism existed. (Okay, so most of the guys probably wouldn’t know what “schism” means and would’ve just described the locker room as a nonviolent version of the East Coast–West Coast rap feud or the Bloods and Crips, but you get the idea.) The year before we had successfully integrated a high-profile group of freshman recruits with the veterans of the team, but this time around was a different story. Because of our run to the National Championship game, the new crop of freshmen felt a sense of entitlement and expected to be the focal point of the team and just cruise to the Final Four like the freshmen before them had. This immaturity offended us older guys, and we took pride in putting them in their place when they refused to acknowledge that we knew more about what it takes to win in college basketball than they did.

  Perhaps the most telling sign that we couldn’t work together as a team was when we returned to The World’s Largest Pillow Fight at the start of the school year. Instead of obliterating our undersized classmates like the year before, we were overpowered to the point that Kyle was hit in the face so hard with a pillow by some random kid that one of his eyes literally watered for the next 72 hours. It was obvious that leadership was sorely lacking, and as a sophomore walk-on, I didn’t feel I was in a position to step up and bring the team together, so I just sat back and watched the madness unfold.