As part of a new series on DimeMag.com, follow author Matthew Pierce into the world of not-so-famous college basketball. If you missed part one, you can read it here.
*** *** ***
My breath came out in clouds of white steam as I walked across the parking lot in the darkness. Each exhale was another cloud to push through, the wisps of vapor curling around my face as I trudged along. Tennessee was warm, but the mountain got cold at night. I needed to be in my dorm room studying, but the JV coaches had called me to the gym to go over the film from the game that afternoon. I really didn’t want to experience it again.
***
The Bryan College gym is carved out of the backside of a hill, so that you walk in the front doors and the whole building bottoms out in front of you. You’re essentially playing in a giant pit. It might not sound like much, but it had a certain charm to it. Our JV team had spent three weeks traveling the Southeast getting crushed by bigger schools, so when our first home game approached, we were looking forward to it.
When I found out that our opponent would be a nearby community college, my excitement rose. After all, community colleges were places where tired-looking 40-year-olds with jobs and families went to school, right? This game was going to be a cinch. In the days leading up to the game, I canvassed the Bryan campus, looking for every pretty girl I knew, casually letting it slip that if they wanted to see some “real basketball,” they needed to come to the JV home game and watch us put a “Bryan College whomping” on someone.
While I was technically correct in that lots of 40-year-olds with kids attend community college, that was not who got off the bus and marched into our gym. The team that got off the bus could be described, roughly, as “former Division 1 dudes who were now very angry.”
***
I entered the game midway through the first half and took Steve’s place, as was our routine. Steve came galloping off the court, his wild hair slinging sweat to and fro as he ran.
I took over Steve’s assignment: a 6-5 forward with an afro straight out of the ABA. My opponent did not seem particularly enthused about joining the proceedings on offense: He didn’t move to set any screens or make any cuts, and instead faded out to the corner behind the three-point-line.
We were in man-to-man, which I hated, because I had always played zone in high school, standing in front of the rim and blocking shots. Little by little, I cheated off of Afro until I had both feet back in the paint, where I felt more comfortable.
Presently the ball found my man standing alone in the corner. The JV coach screamed at me to close out, to get back in position, but I had a plan: I would take one step outside the lane and put my arms out to guard the passing lanes, just like we did in high school.
Afro was obviously not familiar with this airtight scheme. He gave me one look and immediately put the ball on the floor. He took one power dribble to close the space between us and then he took off.
I don’t remember much about the next few moments, except for the thought,
I can feel his shorts on my face and that is not good.
In my entire high school career I had only ever seen two dunks, and one of those was mine. I had played in a league of tiny private schools that was completely insulated from the larger world of AAU, offseason camps, and, you know, talent. Needless to say, I had never been dunked on, and Afro had just put me on his poster.
The three dozen fans who were watching in the stands made that OOOH sound that you make when you’re embarrassed for someone. Afro seemed bored by whole affair, like I was the tenth guy he’d dunked on since breakfast. I hung my head and ran back downcourt.
Keep reading to see what happened next…
Our community college opponents were not happy to be playing basketball in a pit on a Tennessee mountaintop, and they took out their frustrations on us. The game was well out of reach by halftime. The deficit became so large that the Bryan coaches sunk into despair, their words blending together into a kind of coach-speak word salad: Execute with effort. Play your game. Defend each possession.
Meanwhile, a peculiar sight had been unleashed onto the court: our opponents had subbed in a guard who was playing in his warmup pants. Since the game was already decided, this oddity soon became a heated topic between my teammates. Whenever there was a dead ball and we were out of earshot of our coaches, we would huddle on the court and discuss the matter. Did he have poison ivy? Did he forget his shorts?
“I mean, seriously, what is that dude’s issue?” the Blonde Bomber asked, as if the pants were an affront to the very game of basketball itself.
Josh, ever polite and thoughtful, had investigated the matter.
“No, no, I heard him tell the ref it’s because of his religion.”
“His religion?” asked Aaron, our shooting guard.
“He’s apostolic. They don’t wear shorts.”
Aaron scowled.
“So…sleeveless jerseys are okay?”
***
If there was a player on our roster that deserved better, it was Aaron. He was the best player on the JV team, and he would generally play the entire game rotating between the guard spots. He was good enough to be playing varsity — if not at Bryan then somewhere else — but here he was. It was complicated.
Even at the lowest levels of basketball there is still a PR game, and this is where Aaron failed. He had a dry, dark sense of humor that rarely required him to smile, even if he was trying to be sociable. He often came across as dour, gloomy, or uninterested. Aaron didn’t really even look the part — he was short and stocky for a guard, and was already losing his hair. When he was in uniform he looked like the crabby guy on your intramural team who wants the game to be over so he can go to the bar.
At the beginning of the season Aaron had been in contention for a spot on varsity. In the end it came down a battle between Aaron and a player we called Peppy — a smiling, cheerful favorite of the coaching staff. Peppy won the varsity spot; Aaron was sent to JV, where he spent the entire season brooding about the demotion. To be fair, the only thing Aaron really had going for him was that he was better than Peppy at every facet of basketball.
***
The final buzzer sounded, putting a merciful end to our suffering. Our JV team had been routed again, and we remained winless. To make matters worse, the Apostolic Wonder had somehow hit five threes on us. And that’s when you know you’ve hit rock bottom: when the guy wearing pants is lighting you up.
***
I walked into the gym late that night. The varsity team was practicing down in the pit, and the voice of the varsity coach carried up over the rows of empty seats. He was calling for the secondary break, and this was the highest of high comedy.
“Head!” he screamed.
“GIVE ME SOME HEAD!”
The varsity coach was a devout man, spiritual in all his ways, and had apparently kept himself so pure that he was not up to date on sexual slang. His beloved secondary break, with its trailing 4 man and swinging action, was a staple of every practice. His players, all of whom knew what “head” meant, treated this part of practice as a contest to see who could keep the straightest face.
I walked down the hallway to the JV coach’s office, where a TV had been wheeled out and pointed at one empty desk chair. The game film was already cued up: The coaches had isolated one play from the end of the second half, a possession where I had scored off a post up. Aside from a couple of free throws, these were the only points I had scored.
The coaches sat me in the chair and had me watch that one play over and over again. The skinny kid in the grainy footage pivoted to the middle, absorbed a push from a defender, and swished a jumper. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind.
It was an intervention of desperation. 6-8 players did not often trickle down to these depths of college basketball. The coaches had gambled and thrown a partial scholarship at me, hoping that they could quell the chaos in my limbs and build a basketball player. After a handful of blowout losses the results were less than promising.
“You see that?” one of the coaches asked me earnestly. “That’s what we want you to do on every play.”
I nodded eagerly, but I did not get it. I was just a scared kid, scared that the tricks I used in high school to get buckets no longer worked.
I sunk further into depression. If I could not make myself better I then would lose the scholarship. And I didn’t know how to make myself better.
Down on the court, the voice of the varsity coach rose out of the pit and filled the empty corridors of the building:
“WE ARE NOT LEAVING THIS GYM UNTIL I GET HEAD HOW I WANT IT.”
Matthew’s new book, Points: The 6 Best Sports Stories You’ve Never Read, is available on Amazon for 99 cents.
What do you think?
Follow Dime on Twitter at @DimeMag.
Become a fan of Dime Magazine on Facebook HERE.
