Don't Put Me In, Coach (28 page)

Swish.

(Well, it hit the rim as it went through the basket, but you get the idea.)

We win. Suck it, Michigan.

Our bench poured onto the court in celebration and jumped on The Villain’s back, which seemed pretty poetic considering he had figuratively put the entire team on his back all season and had literally broken his back earlier in the year. Since I was in a sling and had just had surgery on my shoulder a few days earlier, I followed my teammates toward the dog pile for a few steps before realizing that that was a terrible idea. Instead, I turned to all the Michigan players somberly walking off the court and tried to do the “suck it” crotch chop in their faces, but since I was only using one arm it looked more like I was trying to throw a fistful of those little snapping firework things onto the ground than it looked like I was trying to channel my inner DX.

Since my taunting of the Michigan players wasn’t really working like I had hoped, I ran toward my teammates to join the celebration, but they were still pretty rowdy, so I diverted my path and ran by the media table on the sideline and randomly started high-fiving whoever I made eye contact with. Because I wasn’t celebrating with the team and was basically running around without any real purpose, a female security guard ran toward me and yelled at me to get off the court, presumably thinking I was a random fan. So yeah, that whole series of events after the buzzer sounded and I ran onto the court just might be the most awkward celebration of a game-winning shot by a player on the winning team in the history of basketball.

Either way, thanks to The Villain’s heroics, we advanced to the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament, where we matched up with an Illinois team that was desperate for a win to cement their bid to the NCAA Tournament. In that regard, the game was a lot like our game with Michigan, only the stakes for Illinois were one step higher since a win would probably put them in the NCAA Tournament and a loss would surely send them to the NIT. Because of
this desperation, Illinois played us pretty well in the first half and actually led by six at halftime after our offense sputtered midway through the first half.

When the second half started, Illinois began pulling away from us, and their lead ballooned all the way up to 11 with 12 minutes left in the game. When Coach Matta reamed into us during the under-12-minute media time-out, it seemed to light a fire under our asses, because we responded by going on a ridiculous 20–0 run to take a nine-point lead with eight minutes left and all but put the Illini away. But much like Brett Favre and Kelly Kapowski’s unreal body, the Illini just wouldn’t quit. They came back with a 14–3 run of their own to take a two-point lead with 1:22 left. The entire second half seemed to play out like this and was essentially just a game of runs, which is a funny coincidence considering I personally had the runs while sitting on the bench but held it in because the game was close and I didn’t want to miss a thrilling finish.

In the final minute and a half, we traded baskets until Illinois finally missed what would’ve been the game-winner at the buzzer and instead sent the game to overtime. On the one hand, this was great news because we were given second life after we nearly let the game slip away. But on the other hand, I had some pretty bad diarrhea brewing and the only reason I held it in for the final minutes of regulation was because I thought the game would be over soon. Now we were set to play another five minutes, which seemed like an eternity to hold it, but also seemed like far too little time to go to the locker room, let it all out, wipe my crack and pull up my pants with just one arm, and return to the bench to catch what promised to be a crazy ending to the game.

I decided to again hold it in and just watch the overtime because I knew that I’d be kicking myself if I missed another desperation shot at the buzzer from The Villain or anything crazy like that. This proved to be a bad idea because the game was forced into a second overtime after The Villain hit a layup with 27 seconds left and Illinois failed to get a shot off before the buzzer sounded. Since I had been holding my ass juice in for the last 30 minutes and really
couldn’t hold it anymore, I darted to the locker room after the overtime buzzer sounded and sat on the porcelain throne for most of the second overtime.

I tried following the game on my phone but couldn’t get any reception, so I quickly did my business and returned to the bench with about 30 seconds left in the game. By that time, we had built a five-point lead and then tacked on a couple of more points shortly thereafter to secure the win. According to my teammates, nothing too crazy happened in the second overtime, which was a relief for me since it was the first time in my career that I wasn’t on the bench or the court while one of my team’s games was going on. Unfortunately, though, it wouldn’t be the last time.

FORTY

O
n the back of The Villain’s near-triple-double, we annihilated Minnesota by 29 in the Big Ten Tournament Championship in our next game and set the record for the biggest margin of victory in a Big Ten championship game ever, giving us a ton of confidence heading into the Big Dance. Some experts speculated that we’d be given a number-one seed in the NCAA Tournament after going 12–1 in our last 13 games and winning both Big Ten titles, but we found out later that night that we’d have to settle for a number-two seed and a trip to Milwaukee to take on UC–Santa Barbara in the first round of the tourney, where we would eventually cruise to a 17-point win, despite The Villain playing probably his worst game of the season.

The Villain bounced back in our second-round game against 10th-seeded Georgia Tech with another near-triple-double that led the way in our nine-point victory over the Yellow Jackets. The win put us in the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2007, when we lost to Florida in the Final Four. And after top-seeded Kansas (who was the best team in our region) was upset by Northern Iowa
in their second-round game, it seemed as though our path for a return trip to the Final Four wouldn’t be nearly as challenging as we had originally anticipated.

Next up was sixth-seeded Tennessee, who we were set to play in St. Louis for a trip to the Elite Eight. Coincidentally, we had played Tennessee in our last trip to the Sweet Sixteen in 2007, when we pulled off one of the most impressive comebacks in NCAA Tournament history and beat them by one in San Antonio. This particular Tennessee team was much like the one from 2007 in that while they might have been inconsistent throughout the year, they had proven time and time again that they could beat anybody in the country on any given night, so we knew we’d have our work cut out for us.

We were pretty confident we would win because we had been playing some of our best basketball of the season and, when all else failed, we had the runaway National Player of the Year on our team (The Villain would officially win the award in April) and could just give him the ball and let him take over if need be. Simply put, while Tennessee was certainly a good team, there was nothing in the week leading up to the game that even remotely had me concerned we would lose. The morning of the game, though, was a completely different story, as a serious catastrophe struck our team.

By now it should be obvious that when I say that a “serious catastrophe struck our team” what I really mean is that something bad happened to me individually but our team as a whole was largely unaffected. This time around I woke up around 4:00 a.m. on the morning of the game and rushed to my hotel bathroom because I felt sick to my stomach and needed to barf. After I puked for about a half-hour, I returned to bed and prayed that I’d feel better in the morning, but when 9:00 a.m. rolled around and I woke up to go to our shootaround, I felt ten times worse and had a throbbing headache to go along with my funky stomach.

I decided to man up and go to the shootaround because I thought if I skipped it I’d have to also skip the game, but this turned out to be a terrible decision. I became increasingly sick throughout
the duration of the shootaround, to the point that I just lay on the bench for the final 15 minutes and showered myself with vomit and self-pity. Once we returned to the hotel, Vince quarantined my room and made Danny go hang out in one of the managers’ rooms, gave me a bunch of meds, explained to me that I had caught the stomach flu bug that was going around the team (a handful of guys had been sick at the Big Ten Tournament, but that was two weeks earlier), and then said that unfortunately the worst was yet to come. According to him, I’d be at rock bottom about an hour before the game was to tip off, which meant I had no choice but to lie in bed all night and miss the game. I was less than pleased with this news.

As game time approached, I discovered that Vince knew exactly what the hell he was talking about because I spent most of my time leading up to the game with my head in my hotel trash can puking my brains out and questioning what life decisions I could have made differently so I wouldn’t have ended up in the position I was. Further complicating things was that I was in a sling and had no use of my left arm at all, which meant, if I accidentally got puke on my shirt or something it would have to stay there because I didn’t have the energy or dexterity to clean it up. It was the worst I’ve ever physically felt in my life, and based on the sounds I was making as I vomited, you’d have been entirely justified in thinking that either I was getting the devil exorcised out of my body through my mouth or I was Oprah devouring a heaping plate of biscuits and gravy.

Once the game finally tipped off, I didn’t even really have the energy to pay all that much attention. I had the game on TV, but most of the first half was a blur for me because I was more concerned with surviving the night than I was with our team’s success (selfish, I know). When the second half started, though, I had recovered enough to at least lie up in bed and yell at the TV every so often, making me feel like some sort of combination of Gerry from
Remember the Titans
and Shooter from
Hoosiers
.

It was unbearably frustrating to not be at the game, even
though I knew I would have had literally no impact whatsoever had I been on the bench instead of in my hotel room following Mike O’Malley’s orders by “spilling my guts.” (By the way, Mike O’Malley on
GUTS
was Gus Johnson before Gus Johnson was Gus Johnson, and that is a fact.) Still, I thought that if I was at the game I could’ve somehow given the guys the kick in the pants that they needed to find that last bit of strength and put Tennessee away.

After we had led for most of the second half, and really most of the game, Tennessee took the lead from us with about six minutes left and seemed to have all the momentum. But something clicked and made us realize that losing the game would not be nearly as enjoyable as winning the game, so we fought back to regain the lead with about two minutes left. We then turned around and handed the lead back to Tennessee, before The Villain hit a clutch three with 44 seconds left to give us a one-point advantage.

The tension was enough to make a healthy fan feel uneasy, so it goes without saying that I was blowing chunks while all this was happening. Tennessee answered The Villain’s three with a tip-in off an offensive rebound and then followed that up with a huge steal on the defensive end. After we fouled to stop the clock, they sank two big free throws to take a three-point lead with 13 seconds left. Our backs were against the wall, but we had been in this position before and knew that all it took was another big three to force overtime.

We inbounded the ball to The Villain, who dribbled up the court and picked up his dribble to fake a handoff to Jon Diebler. Since Jon was our best three-point shooter, both Jon’s defender and The Villain’s defender bit on the fake and stayed with Jon, leaving The Villain wide open. But he had both of his feet in front of the three-point line, so he had to pass to Kyle and get his feet situated before he could shoot. Kyle passed it back to him in the left corner with just five seconds left.

The Villain caught the ball, pump-faked, and then shot an off-balance three that never had much of a chance, but he got his own rebound after it grazed off the front of the rim. He quickly
dribbled back out to the top of the key, swung his body around to face the basket, and let another potential game-tying shot go right before the buzzer sounded. But it didn’t get far because Tennessee’s JP Prince got a hand on it and sent it straight up in the air.

Game over.

Season over.

Career over.

As I sat in the hotel room and watched Tennessee’s bench storm onto the court in celebration, a numbness came over me unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Throughout my career, I was absolutely certain that I was going to cry if we lost in the tournament my senior year, but now that it had happened I really couldn’t do anything but stare at the TV in disbelief. After all the incredible things I was able to experience over the course of my four-year career, I never could’ve possibly anticipated that everything would come to an end as I lay in a hotel bed in St. Louis and threw up every bite of food I had eaten from the previous week.

But that kind of sums up my entire four years at Ohio State. From start to finish, nothing about my walk-on career was typical, so it was only fitting that the ending was equally bizarre and untraditional. Plus, it was a perfect way to bring my career full circle. After all, on November 9, 2006, I spent my first official day on the Ohio State basketball team hugging a trash can as I was reminded how out of shape I was and now, exactly 1,234 days later, I was spending my last official day on the Ohio State basketball team doing the exact same thing.

Those two days of puking will forever serve as bookends for the single greatest time in my life.

EPILOGUE

S
hortly after I completed my prestigious walk-on career and graduated from Ohio State, I was in the training room at the Ohio State’s gym rehabbing my shoulder and missed a call from someone who claimed to represent the Harlem Globetrotters. I went back into the locker room, listened to the voice mail that he left, and immediately thought someone was playing a prank on me. I figured it was worth the risk to call back, though, so I did and soon found out that I was one of six people the Globetrotters had “drafted” and that I was invited to participate in a training camp in September.