Free Don't Put Me In, Coach by Mark Titus Page A

and realized what was going on. Ivan was lying in his bed, holding his sheets up, and looking underneath said sheets to watch the performance. That’s right—Ivan was getting a beej as I lay awake ten feet from him.
    To say I was stunned would be a bigger understatement than saying the temple guards from Legends of the Hidden Temple had pedophiliac tendencies. Even more disturbing was that, after seeing me roll over in my bed, Ivan turned his head my way, looked me in the eye, raised his eyebrows, and stuck out his tongue as if to say to me, “She’s putting my penis in her mouth! Isn’t this awesome?!” I rolled back over in my bed and distinctly remember thinking to myself that nothing in the world could have possibly made me feel any more uncomfortable.
    Following the Tennessee win, nothing too crazy happened either on the court or off the court for the rest of the regular season, which is my way of saying that I didn’t play in very many games and I didn’t attach any Nerf darts to my scrotum or witness one of my teammates get orally pleasured. But truth be told, we did have a handful of exciting games after our thriller against Tennessee, the first of these being a home win against Michigan State at the tail end of January in which we led by 20 at halftime but almost choked it away thanks to Drew Neitzel dropping 24 points on us in the second half.
    The next close call was at Penn State, where we again relinquished a big lead and only won by two despite being on the vergeof a blowout earlier in the game. We were especially lucky to win this game because Penn State’s best shooter, Mike Walker, missed a wide-open three at the buzzer that would’ve won them the game and surely would have been the greatest moment in Penn State basketball history. Hell, come to think of it, it’s still probably the greatest moment in Penn State basketball history that he even had an open shot to beat the number-one team in the country in the first place.
    Either way, we had our rematch against Wisconsin 11 days later in what was the first Big Ten game to ever feature the number-one team in the country against the second-ranked team in the country. (We were first in one poll, and Wisconsin was first in the other, so it technically was the first-ever Big Ten matchup of two top-ranked teams.) Thanks to a last-second shot by Mike, we won the game by one and clinched the Big Ten regular-season championship, but stuff that happens on the court and doesn’t involve me doing my best to avoid embarrassing myself is boring and can be read about in a bunch of other books, so let’s just move on.
    Our last regular-season game of the year was at Michigan, and since we had already clinched the Big Ten championship and were basically guaranteed a top seed in the NCAA Tournament, we really didn’t have much to play for. Michigan, on the other hand, had everything to play for, as both their NCAA Tournament hopes and the job security of their head coach, Tommy Amaker, rested solely on our game. This was the primary reason why they gave us a run for the money and kept it close, but we went on a 10–0 run to finish the game and won by four, Michigan went to the NIT, and Tommy Amaker was fired after the season. Suck it, Michigan.
    After closing out the regular season, we played Michigan again in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament in Chicago and again had our way with them. Then we beat Purdue for the third time in the season in the semifinals, setting up the grudge match with Wisconsin in the championship. But as thrilling as the first two games against the Buzzcuts were (I refer to Wisconsin as the Buzzcutsbecause 99 percent of the guys who have played for Bo Ryan at UW have had buzzcuts—look it up, it’s a fact), the championship game was anticlimactic as we steamrolled them en route to a 23-point win that was never really anything to sweat over.
    I actually got to play in the final minute and made the most of my time by setting up the