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

biggest what-if play of my career. In my first defensive possession of the game, the guy I was guarding caught the ball on the wing, and I let him dribble around me (at least that’s what I tell people) so I could do that poke-from-behind steal that pretty much every white guy who has ever played basketball has gotten good at since it’s usually our only hope on defense. I knocked the ball out of the Wisconsin guy’s hands and took off running toward the other end of the floor as the ball fell right into Danny’s lap. (Danny had finally finished his bout with mono by that time.)
    See if you can guess what happened next. Your two choices are that either (a) Danny saw that I was wide open and had at least a 15-foot head start on all the guys on Wisconsin, threw the ball up to me, and I completed the only dunk of my college career, or (b) Danny covered up the ball to ensure that he properly secured it, slowly dribbled up the court, and then proceeded to miss a layup in traffic to cap off an offensive possession in which Danny was the only guy on our team who touched the ball. Here’s a hint: the answer is “b.” So to recap, just a few months after freezing me out in my hometown, Danny stripped me of a legitimate chance to dunk in the Big Ten Tournament Championship.
    For those who doubt whether I actually would’ve been able to dunk had Danny passed to me, consider this: the only time I ever dunked in a game in my life was in eighth grade, when I used the exact same “poke-from-behind steal and take off running” strategy that I used against the Buzzcuts, only in eighth grade my teammate passed the ball up ahead to me. (Yes, I seriously dunked in eighth grade—I tried to tell you earlier that I was a monster when I was younger.) So yeah, if I could’ve completed the same play ineighth grade, I don’t think I would’ve had much of a problem as a college freshman. Nonetheless, I think the saddest part of this whole situation is that, even though Danny repeatedly cockblocked me on the court throughout the season, I still would have much rather shared a hotel room with him than have to suffer rooming with Ivan again.

ELEVEN
    W inning the Big Ten Tournament improved our record to 30–3, which was good enough for us to get a number-one seed in the NCAA Tournament for just the third time in program history. We drew Central Connecticut State for our first-round game that was to be played at legendary Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. Even though I had played in almost half of the games up to that point, I was pretty nervous about this game because the NCAA Tournament is a completely different beast, and since Central Connecticut State kinda sucked I figured there was a good chance I’d get to play. And once again, I was right. We jumped all over Central Connecticut State right out of the gate and never looked back, giving me an opportunity to make my lifelong dream of playing in the NCAA Tournament a reality.
    When Coach Matta gave me the nod with a minute left, I tried to mentally approach the game as if it were any other, which is to say that I told myself over and over not to try to do anything special and to instead just do my best to stay out of the way. But no matter how hard I tried to convince myself it was just anothergame, I couldn’t calm my nerves. After all, I usually only played in front of a few thousand people, but because this was a tournament and there was another game after ours, the fans from the other two teams had combined with the Ohio State fans and the 12 Central Connecticut State fans to pack Rupp Arena. Throw in the fact that millions were watching on TV and my attempt to convince myself it was just another game was a lost cause.
    As I walked to the scorer’s table to check into the game, Coach Matta could tell I was nervous, so he stood up from his chair and called me over to him. He then put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and waited a second before he said, “Don’t fuck