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

  The coaches eventually picked up on the rift and organized a trip to a local SWAT team obstacle course just a few weeks before practice was set to start as a way to help with the team-building process. This obstacle course was used by the real Columbus SWAT team for their training and consisted of running, jumping, ziplining, climbing, crawling, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and all sorts of other things I was terrible at, which kind of made me wonder if the coaches were trying to run me off the team. I should mention that compounding the problem of me being unathletic and a little overweight was the fact that I had swollen testicles because I was still recovering from a surgery I had over the summer to fix a varicocele in my sack. And by “I should mention,” I mean that I should keep that information to myself because it’s incredibly personal and embarrassing, and writing about it in my book is proof that I obviously have no self-respect.

  Nonetheless, even though my nutsack was honest to God the size of a softball, my urologist had cleared me for physical activity because he claimed that I had fully healed from my surgery. (He and I clearly had different definitions of “fully healed.”) Since swollen balls apparently weren’t a legitimate excuse to sit out, I had no choice but to suck it up and do my best to get through the obstacle course, which I found out right away would be more challenging than I could have ever anticipated.

  When we arrived at the SWAT facility, a group of cops greeted us and told us to split into two teams for a competition to see who could get through the obstacle course the quickest. Now, common sense would say we should have mixed the teams up so that freshmen and veterans were both on each team, which explains why we did the exact opposite. One group was comprised of the seven guys who had been on the team the year before, while the other group was made up of the six new guys.

  The veterans decided to go first so we could set the tone and then taunt the younger guys as they went through the course, and we also decided that our weakest guy (from the standpoint of who would take the longest to get through the course) should start us off so the stronger guys could clip his heels and motivate him to move faster. As you could probably guess, thanks to the shot put in my pants, I was that guy.

  “The first thing you gotta do,” one cop said as he pointed to a 20-foot log suspended eight feet in the air, “is climb up onto that and shift your way across. If you’re strong enough, just hang off the side and move across it like you would on monkey bars. If you’ve got good enough balance, you can run across it. But if you lose your grip or fall off, you’ve got to start over. That’s why pretty much all of us agree that the best method is to straddle it and just scoot backwards the entire way.” Seeing as how I wasn’t strong and I had terrible balance, this meant my only choice was to use the straddling method. With a ballsack the size of an orange. Awesome.

  After what seemed like 30 minutes of scooting and sarcastically yelling “I ain’t no bitch!” for no reason in particular, I ended the most painful experience of my life and made it across the log. Once I conquered that first obstacle, the rest of the course was a breeze, which is to say that the rest of the course didn’t directly involve me putting a ton of pressure on my swollen testicles as I dragged them across a log. In the end, even though we had to overcome my genital problem and we had one more person in our group, the veterans still beat the new guys by over 10 minutes, which led to trash-talking by both groups and only made matters worse. By the time we all made it back to our gym, showered, and went home, the veterans and new guys probably had more animosity for each other than when the day started. So yeah, I’d say the whole team-building thing kinda backfired.

  A couple of weeks later, we played our first exhibition game against Ashland on Halloween night and won by 29, which gave us all sorts of false confidence. After all, just one season earlier we had played in the Division I National Championship game while Ashland went 16–12 in Division II, so there really wasn’t any reason for us to be pounding our chests. Our overconfidence came back to bite us in the second and final exhibition of the season a week later against Findlay, when the combination of thinking we were better than what we actually were and the increasing lack of unity on our team made the game a memorable one for all the wrong reasons.

  Although, like Ashland, Findlay was a Division II team, they had gone 28–5 the year before and had most of their team back, making them the favorites to win the D-II National Championship that year (which they ultimately did en route to a 36–0 season). But our guys apparently thought all D-II teams were created equal and didn’t see Findlay as a serious threat. This proved to be a terrible decision because Findlay and their slew of upperclassmen ended up beating our mess of a team by two points on our home court. So to recap, seven months after coming within one game of being crowned the best team in Division I college basketball, we suddenly weren’t even the best team in Division II.

  Needless to say, Coach Matta was less than thrilled with the loss and called for a 6:00 a.m. practice the next morning, which consisted of an hour and a half straight of nothing but one-on-one defensive drills (his biggest gripe with the Findlay game was our inability to guard the guy with the ball) and was, without a doubt, the most miserable practice of my life at any level of any sport. After the practice, I crawled my way back to the locker room and fell asleep in my locker as I angrily thought about how dysfunctional our team was. When it hit me that we still had yet to even play a real game, I realized that there was very little chance that this season was going to be anything but a thoroughly entertaining train wreck.

  SIXTEEN

  Following the embarrassing loss to Findlay, Coach Matta’s message sent via the 6:00 a.m. practice came in loud and clear, and we played pretty well in our season opener against Green Bay. We were expected to destroy Green Bay, so it wasn’t anything to brag about, but it was a win nonetheless, and with the team we had that year it was hard to say just how frequently we’d have the opportunity to celebrate wins. We followed that up with a win over Columbia the next night to earn a trip to Madison Square Garden for the final two rounds of the preseason NIT. Our first game in New York City was against Syracuse on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but we got to the city on Monday because there was a banquet being held for the four teams left in the tournament. (Texas A&M and Washington were the other two teams.)

  The only reason I even bring this banquet up is because it was organized by ESPN and Dick’s Sporting Goods: ESPN was to televise the remaining games of the tournament, and Dick’s was the chief corporate sponsor of the preseason NIT. Why was this important? Well, it was customary with these tournaments for the corporate sponsor to provide some sort of gift for the players involved, and we found out at the end of the night that our gift was a bag from Dick’s filled with handfuls of stuff, including a gift card to their store. And because ESPN was also involved, St. John’s coach Steve Lavin, who worked as a commentator for ESPN at the time, was the emcee for the banquet and was therefore responsible for informing us about our gift bags.

  After dinner, Lavin approached the podium for his closing remarks or whatever and ended his speech by saying, “I almost forgot to mention that Dick’s has graciously provided a little goodie bag for all the players. So, before you leave, don’t forget to stop by the table back there and pick up your bag of Dick’s … stuff.” Nobody knew whether he was trying to make a joke or whether he just picked a bad time in the sentence to catch his breath, so a few people let out some light chuckles while the rest of us did our best to hold our laughter in. But then Lavin made matters worse when he followed it up with “There’s a lot of good stuff in there that I think you’re going to be excited about, especially if you like Dick’s.”

  At this point, most people assumed he was purposely saying these things, and a small roar of laughter erupted through the room that muffled out Lavin’s final “good luck to all the teams and good-night everybody” comments. To this day, I’m still bothered by whether or not Lavin knew what he was saying. In fact, screw wanting to know who really shot JFK
—if I could get one question answered about an event throughout the history of the world, it would definitely be “Was Steve Lavin purposely making dick puns at the 2007 preseason NIT banquet, or was it just a hilarious coincidence?”

  After we got back to our hotel in Times Square and exhausted all the Dick’s jokes we could think of, we turned our focus on Syracuse. We were unranked, but Syracuse was 21st in the nation and playing close to home, so we had a good opportunity to get a statement win of sorts. And despite all the chemistry problems we had, we were able to do just that. We controlled most of the game and ended up beating Syracuse by 14 points, thanks in large part to Kosta Koufos having a breakthrough game with 24 points and 9 rebounds. But as much as Kosta (who now plays in the NBA for the Denver Nuggets) would’ve liked to have all of us tell him how great he was, the truth was that most of the guys actually resented his successful game because his ball-hogging on the court and immature social skills off it had already helped earn him the title of team douche bag.

  A few weeks earlier, at a house party on Ohio State’s campus, Kosta spent the entire night either lecturing us about why we shouldn’t drink beer or awkwardly trying to high-five every girl who walked by us. He was so intolerable that after hours of following everyone around and explaining how beer “makes you fat” and “kills your brain,” one of our senior captains, Matt Terwilliger—the one guy who could beat up everyone else on our team—finally shut him up in awesome fashion by pouring an entire beer on Kosta’s head while Kosta was in midsentence. Then, just a few weeks after the Syracuse game, Kosta started his season-long trend of standing up in the middle of the time-out huddles so he could neglect what Coach Matta was trying to tell him and instead talk to his mom in the stands. (Sadly, I’m not kidding.)

  Throw in the fact that he was a colossal ball-hog for most of the season and that he basically hijacked the Ohio State basketball program for a year to help himself get to the NBA, and it’s easy to see why Kosta was a complete outcast on our team. So when he shot 4 for 16 in a blowout loss to Texas A&M in the championship game of the tournament and then never again played as well as he did against Syracuse, well, I guess you could say that more than a few guys on the team were pleased. More than anything else, this active cheering against a teammate by most of the guys on the team tells you all you really need to know about how dysfunctional our team was that season.

  We got back on the right track after the Texas A&M massacre by beating VMI at home pretty handily, but turned right around after that game and lost a tough one at home to second-ranked North Carolina. What made that particular loss so frustrating was that we played pretty well in the first half and were up by three at halftime, but went ice-cold in the second half and squandered a close one. What made it even more frustrating was that we did pretty much the exact same thing in our next game at 16th-ranked Butler, where we led by as many as 14 in the first half but collapsed down the stretch and lost by 19.

  Losing to Butler just a few miles from my hometown was bad enough, but getting manhandled in the second half after dominating the first half for the second straight game was an inexcusable embarrassment. I had no choice but to suck it up, though, and take the jabs about the loss from my friends in Indiana because for the past six months or so I had obviously been taking credit for our trip to the Final Four and it was only fair for me to accept the blame for defeat if I was going to expect praise for the victories. Whatever the case, what was really important was that for the first time in my brief college basketball career my team had suffered two straight losses. Seven games into the season, our record was 4–3, with three of those wins coming against teams that I could’ve played serious minutes for (which meant those games didn’t really count for anything). Things were looking bleak.

  SEVENTEEN

  With some help from a relatively weak stretch in our schedule, we responded well to Ohio State basketball’s first losing streak in almost three years by going on an eight-game winning streak. It started with a 47–39 win over Coppin State at home that was every bit as boring as you’d think and was described by the AP as a game “played at a glacial pace.” After that, we blew out the Presbyterian Blue Hose, who clearly have the best nickname of any school in college basketball. The Presbyterian game was a significant one because it marked the last time I did anything of any importance on the basketball court and therefore served as the end of the serious side of my college basketball career.

  I checked into the game with one minute left, and thanks to a huge misunderstanding, I was not only passed the ball but I was also provided with a ball screen from Kyle. You see, after I hit the three in the Youngstown State game my freshman year and embarrassingly got treated like J-Mac by the fans, I vowed then and there to never shoot during a game again. I tried explaining this to my teammates many times, but I apparently never got through to them because every time I stepped on the court at the end of games, they would pass me the ball and try to get me an open shot so I could score. (Now that I think about it, there’s a good chance they did it only because I repeatedly asked them to do the exact opposite.) Anyway, Kyle set a screen to get me open, either because he thought he was doing me a favor or he was intentionally trying to annoy me, and I had no choice but to use his screen and take a couple dribbles toward the top of the key.

  As this happened, the court opened up, but I felt a defender a couple steps behind me. Unsure of what to do, I decided to shot-fake to make it look like I was trying to make a legitimate basketball move … even though in truth I was hoping it would give the defender enough time to catch up, which in turn would eliminate any chance of me shooting the ball. Unfortunately, the opposite happened. He bit on my shot-fake, flew through the air, and left me wide open. At this point, I had no choice but to let the shot fly and hope for the best, which is obviously another way of saying I confidently shot the three, smoothly sank that bitch like it was nothing, and then backpedaled all the way back on defense like a motherf’ing boss.

  Following our win over Presbyterian, we beat Cleveland State in Cleveland by 17 to set up a National Championship rematch against Florida in Columbus. Even though both of our teams were completely different (Jamar was the only returning starter for either team) and were nowhere near as relevant on a national scale, the handful of veteran guys on our team desperately wanted some measure of revenge, no matter how small. And based on the fact that 19,000 people packed our arena and made the atmosphere more electric than Blanka in “Street Fighter II,” I’d say Ohio State fans wanted some revenge as well.

  But as hungry for payback as we were, nobody wanted to beat Florida more than Coach Matta. That’s because, from what I’ve been told, when Florida coach Billy Donovan and Coach Matta met at half-court to shake hands and wish each other good luck right before the tip of the 2007 National Championship, Donovan apparently said to Matta, “Don’t worry, Thad. I lost the National Championship game the first time I got here too.” So when we took over the game with about eight minutes left in the first half and never looked back on our way to a 13-point win, it was no surprise to me that Coach Matta led the celebration in the locker room as if we had won some sort of championship and not just another regular-season game.

  We followed up the big win against Florida (that really wasn’t that big of a win since we were playing at home and Florida kinda sucked) with a high-scoring victory over Maryland–Baltimore County, a road win against a bad Illinois team, and a couple of home wins against an awful Iowa team and an even worse Northwestern team. With a 12–3 overall record, we were in a tie for first place in the Big Ten with a 3–0 conference record and were feeling pretty good about ourselves.

  But sadly, the good times didn’t last much longer as another second-half collapse in a road loss to Purdue in our next game triggered our descent into mediocrity for the rest of the season. We dropped our next two after that to eleventh-ranked Michigan State and seventh-ranked Tennessee, and while both losses were relatively close and came on the road against highly ran
ked teams, the bottom line was that we still were in the midst of a three-game losing streak. When considering that the season before we only lost a grand total of three games throughout the entire regular season, a three-game losing streak seemed pretty inconceivable to me.

  At this point in the season, not only was our team having trouble collectively keeping it together, but Evan was also having a hard time getting his head on straight. After starting the season coming off the bench and playing only about a quarter of every game, toward the middle of the season Evan emerged as a legitimate scoring threat and became a starter for the rest of the year. In the Tennessee game, he played all but three minutes and had by far his best game of the year with 21 points, 10 rebounds, and 3 assists. Halfway through his freshman season, it seemed as though Evan had finally gotten the hang of college basketball, with the operative word here being “seemed.”

  As I alluded to earlier, Evan honestly believed that he would be a clear-cut All-American if his teammates and coaches were not actively working against him to keep him down (which we obviously weren’t). For him, the Tennessee game validated what he had thought all along—that not only should he be starting, but he should also be the focal point of our offense. But because the coaches and other players supposedly hated him, he knew this would never happen. Pair this mind-set with the fact that he was one to kick a basketball across the gym during practice if he missed a few shots in a row and it’s easy to see how an Evan Turner meltdown was a common occurrence throughout that year.