by Mark Titus
Once I backed The Villain all the way down to the right block, the shot clock showed just four seconds, so I knew I’d have to make my move quickly. Like pretty much every other time I have the ball during a scrimmage or game, I thought to myself, What would Larry Bird do? and decided that he would have surely tried to make The Villain look foolish by using a pump-fake somehow, so that’s what I went for. I took two dribbles toward the middle of the lane, pushed off my right foot, picked up my dribble as I jumped back toward the free throw line to create separation and make it look like I was about to shoot a fadeaway, and sold the fake so well that even I thought I was about to shoot it.
The Villain knew that the shot clock buzzer was about to go off, figured my fake was a desperation shot, and threw his entire body in the air and stretched out his arm to block it. As he soared through the air with just one second left on the shot clock, I tried to step under his outstretched body and lay the ball in the basket, except, as I went to do this, I saw The Villain’s knee heading right toward my face. (I still don’t know if he was trying to knee me in the face on purpose or not.) At the last instant, I ducked out of the way, slightly bent over to avoid getting a mouthful of his knee, and blindly threw the ball toward the basket. As that happened, The Villain rolled over the top of my back and landed hard on his hip to the sound of an echoing thud and a blowing whistle.
Foul on The Villain. Two free throws for The Shark. Larry Legend would’ve no doubt been proud.
Almost instantly after he hit the deck, The Villain sprang back up and came charging toward me, but was held back by a few teammates. (Apparently he was pissed because he thought I intentionally tried to hurt him or something.) As they tried to calm him down, I turned my back to him and tried my best to ignore him while I lined up for my free throws. Eventually, he calmed down enough to where he wasn’t a threat to physically attack me, but he certainly didn’t calm down enough to refrain from calling me a “punk-ass bitch” and warning me that “if you try that shit again I’ll knock your ass out” while I sank both of my free throws and sealed the scrimmage win for our team.
After practice, I stayed in the gym for a little bit because I figured The Villain would try to fight me in the locker room and I wanted to give him a second to cool down. After I sat down and started taking my shoes off, Coach Matta approached me with a grave look on his face and said, “Mark, if you ever pull a stunt like that again, your ass is gone. I just can’t have that on my basketball team. I mean, to have the audacity to make the smart basketball play and pump-fake the almighty Evan Turner? I won’t stand for it. You’re better than that.”
I breathed a sigh of relief when, halfway through, he cracked a smile that turned into straight-up laughter. In fact, from what I was told by a handful of different players and managers, as everything was unfolding Coach Matta actually covered his face with the sheet of paper in his hand because he was turning red from laughing so hard at The Villain. I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty confident this marked the first time in history that a walk-on undercut his superstar teammate and caused him to violently land on the floor and the head coach not only sided with the walk-on but actually turned red from laughing so hard at the superstar. So that’s something to be proud of.
Two days after The Villain fell victim to my silky smooth post moves and consequently tried to fight me, we played at Northwestern and he guarded Northwestern’s Kevin Coble, who was one of the best players in the Big Ten that season. At some point during the game, Coble caught the ball on the right wing and—I shit you not—proceeded to back The Villain down to the right block before he took a couple of dribbles toward the lane, pump-faked, and went to the free throw line after The Villain bit on the fake and hammered him. It was the exact same play that I executed in practice, only now, since we were on TV in primetime and it was one of the Big Ten’s best players who did it instead of me, The Villain kept his mouth shut and solemnly walked away from Coble. Vindication never tasted so sweet to me.
He’ll never admit it, but I’d be willing to bet that, as he watched Coble shoot the free throws, The Villain cursed my name under his breath because he knew that I was getting so much enjoyment not only out of seeing him fall for the exact same move that I got him on, but also seeing him puss out of confronting Coble when he was so anxious to fight me. And make no mistake about it—I was getting a ton of enjoyment out of it. I laughed to myself for damn near the rest of the game and only stopped laughing when Northwestern hit a last-second three and beat us for the only time during my four-year career.
TWENTY-NINE
Following the loss to Northwestern, we were completely outplayed at home by 16th-ranked Illinois and lost by two in a game that we never led and that we never were much of a threat to win despite keeping the score close all game. With the loss, we were now in the middle of a three-game losing streak, which was our worst losing streak of the season but wasn’t cause for too much concern because we lost those three games only by a combined 10 points. Thankfully, we bounced back with a win over Penn State at home, but turned right around and got completely mutilated in a 25-point loss to Purdue at their place. Whereas most of our other losses throughout the season were either close or semi-justifiable, a blowout loss to a Purdue team that we had beaten earlier in the season was nothing short of an inexcusable embarrassment. With only two games left in the regular season, it wasn’t exactly a great time in the season to be getting our asses handed to us like that.
After Purdue we played Iowa, who we coincidentally played immediately after we were blown out by West Virginia earlier in the season. And much like that first matchup with the Hawkeyes, this time around we also continued our poor play from the previous game and let the game get much closer than it probably should have been. Luckily, though, in the end we were able to escape Iowa City with a two-point win after a game-winning three-point attempt from Iowa at the buzzer clanked off the rim.
An interesting note from this game (and by “interesting” I mean “pretty disgusting”) is that, with about eight minutes left, I felt an overwhelming surge of diarrhea knocking on my butthole, letting me know that it was on the precipice of making a serious mess in my underpants. Because of the way Iowa’s gym was structured, I couldn’t go back to our locker room without drawing attention to myself by walking in front of Iowa’s bench, so I held it in for the remainder of the game. (If I’d gone during the last media time-out, I’d have been stuck because I would’ve had to walk back in front of Iowa’s bench as the game was going on to get back to my spot on our bench.)
After eight excruciating minutes of waiting, as soon as the buzzer sounded I shook hands with all of Iowa’s players, darted straight to the locker room, and relieved myself while Coach Matta gave his postgame speech to the team just a few yards away. I then proceeded to remain on the toilet for no less than 45 minutes to finish my business. When I finally completed the task at hand, I walked out of the stall and was greeted by the sight of an empty locker room, so I quickly changed out of my uniform, gathered all my stuff together, and ran to our bus, where I discovered that everyone on the team had been waiting for me for at least 10 minutes. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t much more proud than I was apologetic.
After the close Iowa win quite literally scared the crap out of me, we closed out the regular season with yet another close one at home against Northwestern. These last two wins clinched the five seed in the Big Ten Tournament for us, where we were to face the fourth-seeded Wisconsin Buzzcuts in our opening-round game. They had already beaten us that season, so we were out for a little revenge and ultimately were able to get that revenge when we pulled away late and beat them by four.
With the win over the Buzzcuts, we advanced to play top-seeded and sixth-ranked Michigan State in the next round. Michigan State entered the game as a candidate for a number-one seed in the NCAA Tournament, so they had a lot to play for. But like Donny Kerabatsos and a child who wanders into the middle of a movie, they surprisingly looked completely
out of their element. We led for pretty much the entire game and won by 12. This win set up the grudge match against third-seeded Purdue for the Big Ten Tournament Championship, but Purdue had more gas in the tank down the stretch and beat us by four.
Even though we let the final game slip away, we still had a pretty strong run through the Big Ten Tournament (highlighted by beating one of the best teams in the country) and removed all doubt as to whether we’d get a bid to the NCAA Tournament. The only questions that remained were what seed we’d get, who we’d play, and whether or not someone on our team would poop his pants right before our pregame shootaround. As we’d soon find out, the answers to these questions were, respectively, eight, Siena, and, unfortunately, yes.
Immediately after the Big Ten Championship game, we gathered as a team in a room at Conseco Fieldhouse to watch the NCAA Tournament Selection Show, during which Greg Gumbel informed us that we had been given an eight seed and were to play ninth-seeded Siena in Dayton for our first-round game. Most of us were less concerned about Siena and more concerned about the fact that after we beat Siena we were most likely going to have to play our second-round game against Louisville, who was the number-one overall seed for the entire tournament and had been pretty dominant all season. This is what we in the business refer to as “looking ahead,” and it’s typically never a good thing. (“Looking ahead” shouldn’t be confused with foreshadowing, which is what I just did by saying we were more concerned about Louisville than Siena, and then just did again by explicitly stating that I was foreshadowing.) But as bad of a feeling as I got, it was nothing compared to the bad vibes I got when we boarded the team bus to go to our morning shootaround on the day of the game and The Villain was nowhere to be found.
Fifteen minutes after we were supposed to have left to go to our shootaround, The Villain finally boarded the bus with a huge smile across his face that said, “I just did something embarrassing, and this smile is my way of both laughing at myself and overcompensating so none of you think anything is wrong.” Most of us could tell something was off, but we couldn’t really decipher the message his smile was sending until a teammate stepped in and translated for us. Apparently, while The Villain was on the hotel elevator on his way down to the first floor to get on the bus for the shootaround, he suddenly got quiet and had a look on his face that conveyed that he had just had a terrible realization, kinda like how you’d look in those first couple seconds after you realize that you were supposed to work today or that you forgot to lock your doors before you left for vacation.
Basically, the expression on his face said, Oh shit, which, coincidentally, was exactly the problem. According to The Villain, he had been battling a cold for a few days and was given some specific meds from our trainer that produced loose bowels as a side effect. I’ve had numerous colds in my life and taken all sorts of medications yet have never had loose bowels, so I was a little skeptical about his excuse. Even if he did have loose bowels, I saw no reason why he couldn’t have at least anticipated the poop coming and hurried to a bathroom to take care of it. Regardless of who or what is to blame, the fact of the matter is that The Villain boarded the elevator with a fresh pair of underwear on, but when the elevator started to descend, so did the brownie batter.
Now, I don’t know specifics about this incident, which is to say that I don’t know how big of a mess The Villain actually made, so I can’t really gauge exactly how embarrassing this should be for him. Some have speculated that he simply sharted himself, which is embarrassing, sure, but certainly isn’t entirely uncommon. (After all, accidentally sharting from time to time is the one common denominator among all of us humans.) I’ve heard other rumors that it was a full-on dump that he unloaded in his britches, which would be the most embarrassing possibility for him but is also pretty unrealistic. (Although with The Villain nothing is ever truly unrealistic.) The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but it really doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that, no matter how you slice it, the best player on our team and the future National Player of the Year in college basketball pooped his pants before the first NCAA Tournament game of his life and then went out and damn near put up a triple-double as he recorded 25 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists.
Not only that, but he did it in the most thrilling game of the entire tournament: our game with Siena went into double overtime, and 17 total points were scored in the final minute of regulation, the final minute of the first overtime, and the final minute of the second overtime combined. In other words, clutch shot after clutch shot was being made, but unfortunately, Siena (read: Siena’s Ronald Moore) ended up hitting one more clutch shot than we did and beat us by two to end our season. Making the loss sting that much more was the fact that we held late leads at each closing stage of the game (end of regulation and both overtimes), and each time Siena hit a late shot to either tie or win the game. We still had a chance to win at the end of regulation and both overtimes, but all three would-be game-winners clanked off the rim.
So, to recap, all we needed was one out of three buzzer beaters to go down to win. We got none. If you ask me, that’s—pun absolutely intended—a pretty shitty way to end a season.
THIRTY
Following my junior season at Ohio State, BJ Mullens (who had just finished his freshman season) declared for the NBA draft and casually brought up in conversation that it would be funny if I declared too. After giving it some thought (and by “some thought” I mean virtually no thought at all), I realized that this was a perfect idea. Not only was it something I had always kind of wanted to do just to see what would happen, but I also figured it would make for some good entertainment on my blog if I tried to get invited to predraft camps and workouts.
As far as I knew, anyone could put their name in the draft—it was actually getting drafted that was the tricky part. I knew that I wasn’t going to get drafted, so the plan was to submit my name for a month or so, try to weasel my way into some workouts and camps, and then remove myself from the draft before the deadline so I could stay eligible for my senior season at Ohio State. I asked BJ what he had to do to officially submit his name, and he told me that Egelhoff gave him some papers to fill out and sign, and then they faxed those papers to the league office in New York.
So, the next day I went to Egelhoff’s office and told him I wanted to enter my name into the NBA draft, and he laughed and gave me the papers. Once I wrote down all the pertinent information, he hit a few buttons on the fax machine and sent the papers to the NBA. And with that, I had officially declared myself eligible for the 2009 NBA draft.
A little over a week later, I was working out (shocking, I know) in our practice gym, when Egelhoff opened the doors and walked straight toward me with papers in his hand. He stood about a foot away from me while I was in the middle of a timed shooting drill and said, “The NBA is pissed. Sign these now.”
A couple of days earlier, an assistant coach told me that the NBA had called the Ohio State basketball office a few times and told them I was making a mockery of their process, but I assumed he was joking. But now that Egelhoff was urgently shoving papers in my face that appeared to be the papers I was supposed to submit to withdraw my name from the draft, I realized that the NBA wasn’t nearly as amused as I was. Even though I didn’t technically have to sign the papers, I figured the charade had run its course and I didn’t want to tarnish the relationship between the NBA and Ohio State, so I obliged and signed.
After I was forced to remove my name from the draft, I took to my blog to explain what happened. I said “it was fun while it lasted” and explained that I wasn’t that upset because I was going to remove my name eventually anyway, so to be the first guy kicked out of the draft was actually an accomplishment I was proud of. Technically and legally speaking, I wasn’t actually forced out of the draft, but I pretty much had to sign the papers that were shoved in my face lest I deal with some sort of repercussions … so for all intents and purposes I was forced out.
I thought that t
he blog post would serve as a natural ending to my draft experiment, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Almost instantly after I published my blog post, the ordeal became a huge national story, to the point that it was one of four feature stories on Yahoo.com’s home page (along with a story about Barack Obama, a story about Michelle Obama, and a story about the flu outbreak in America), and it was the second-most-searched topic on Google for the day.
Some people were outraged with the NBA, and in the comments section of one article I actually indirectly sparked a race war because a handful of ignorant white guys claimed that I was kicked out just because I was white, a handful of black guys disagreed, and things snowballed from there. A few people emailed me and tried to persuade me to sue the NBA. Others thought I should go to the draft and walk up onstage when an absentee draft pick’s name was announced. Everyone I talked to had an opinion on how I should handle the situation, all of them oblivious to the fact that I honestly did not care about getting kicked out and was perfectly fine with it because it worked out much better for me than it would have had I been able to stay eligible for the draft for an extra couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, as everyone around me seemed to be completely enraged, I sat back and laughed at the irony of the situation: the NBA had made me take my name out because they claimed I was making a mockery of their draft, yet by forcing me out they had made the process more of a mockery than I could’ve ever possibly done on my own.
