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Ohio State walk-on and blogger extraordinaire Mark Titus was "drafted" by the Harlem Globetrotters today, prompting this reaction from him:

"Dreams do come true," Titus tweeted.

Getting drafted by the Globetrotters amounts to receiving an invitation to the team's fall tryout camp, but consider it a step up for Titus one year after he declared for the NBA draft and was essentially "told to go away."

Not that Titus doesn't have options, of course. CNBC's Darren Rovell reports that the 6-foot-4 guard is pitching a memoir to publishers about his Ohio State years that is tentatively titled, "Don't Put Me In Coach."

"I've also practiced with that bucket when people think it has water and it really has confetti," Titus joked, referencing the familiar Globetrotter trick. "I'm really good at that."

The Globetrotters also drafted Montana's Anthony Johnson, the hero of the Big Sky tournament who had only continued his college career at his wife's urging. The Globetrotters went ahead and drafted Johnson's wife, Shaunte Nance-Johnson, as well.


"When (the Globetrotters) contacted us, Anthony and I both thought we were getting punked," Nance-Johnson said. “When he finally convinced us he was serious, we were just overwhelmed. We’re just so thankful that we continue to have these opportunities show up at our doorstep."

But Johnson, who poured in 42 points in the Big Sky title game, is for now prioritizing NBA workouts and a possible career overseas over becoming on-the-court teammates with his wife.

The show -- in this case, the Globetrotters -- will have to wait.

Like all college graduates, Mark Titus has a world of uncertainty ahead of him. Titus built an empire around his Club Trillion blog, but now that his basketball career at Ohio State is over, he has to decide the future of what was, during his tenure, one of the funniest college hoops blogs anywhere and easily the best athlete-written blog of all time. What should Mark Titus do for an encore?

Turns out, he'll keep writing the blog. And in the meantime, he'll be establishing a scholarship specifically for college basketball walk-ons. This is the best idea of all time:

Because I lived it for two years, I know exactly what walk-ons have to go through, which is why I plan on starting the first ever scholarship exclusively for Division I basketball walk-ons. [...] As far as criteria for the scholarship, it’s pretty simple really. It will be given to the guy who essentially reminds me of myself the most. A majority of walk-ons try especially hard to fit in, are terrified of upsetting the coach, and are always a little uptight over just about anything. Guys like this will have no chance whatsoever at winning the scholarship. Instead, I’ll be looking for the guy who pulls pranks on his teammates, interrupts his head coach midsentence to make immature wisecracks, and knows the lyrics to at least ten Journey songs. Also, bonus points will be awarded for growing a sweet mustache during the season. I think you get the idea.

Titus says there are some issues with compliance to be ironed out; the scholarship might have to be given retroactively thanks to NCAA regulations. There's also the little matter of actually raising enough money to give a scholarship like this every year. But those are mere logistics, and in this case, the logistics are secondary. Let's celebrate the idea. The Mark Titus Scholarship For The Advancement Of Basketball Walk-Ons. That has a nice ring to it, huh?

Ohio State's Evan Turner continued his sweep of national player of the year awards by taking home the Wooden Award on Friday night in Los Angeles.

Turner spent the previous evening hanging out with Jimmy Kimmel, and on the nationally televised show, Kimmel managed to flash some knowledge by calling the Buckeyes star as Evan "The Villain" Turner.

That's the nickname that walk-on teammate and blogger Mark Titus famously bestowed upon Turner, who broke into a huge smile while sitting in the audience alongside Wooden Award finalist Wes Johnson of Syracuse.

"I'm going to say a prayer for you guys that neither of you winds up on the Clippers," Kimmel joked.

Both players laughed at that one, but Johnson, who hasn't yet announced his intentions, actually might be headed to the Clippers according to at least one mock draft.

Mark Titus is a tremendous jokester, easily the funniest college basketball player of the past few years. You don't build a following the size of Titus' with a blog about your end-of-the-bench exploits without a sense of humor, and Titus certainly has that. Which is a shame for Ohio State fans, actually. Because thanks to Titus' cruel April Fools' Day prank, plenty of them got completely punked.

Titus took to his Twitter feed yesterday to entice Buckeyes followers with an all-too-tantalizing notion: That runaway Associated Press player of the year Evan Turner was leaning toward staying at OSU for his senior year:

Impressed w/ OSU recruits in McD's game last night. With The Villain coming back, they should be preseason #1. I really might redshirt now.

Let me clarify. The Villain hasn't officially decided, but he's hinted to me by saying things like "We're gonna be loaded next year".

He's also hinted by saying "I'm going to stay for my senior year" and "I'm not going to NBA this year". Sorry I drew conclusions from this.

Oh, Titus. You trickster.

Of course, Turner isn't returning for his senior year. Or, if he does, it won't have anything to do with the fake comments Titus posted on his blog yesterday. Turner is the consensus No. 2 -- and possible No. 1 -- overall pick in the NBA draft next year. Returning for his senior season would not only put him at risk of injury, but would mean gambling his financial future on the NBA lockout in 2011. Evan Turner is not staying. Sorry, folks. April Fool's.

Oh, and in other April 1-related clarifications: Ed Davis is not transferring to a different school. Stupid April Fools. For one day of the year, it's almost like you can't trust everything you read on the Internet.

Evan Turner is a monster on the court, the kind of athletic specimen -- 6-foot-7, long arms, perfect footwork, uncanny instincts -- built to dominate college basketball. At season's end, Turner will almost certainly be given a plethora of player of the year awards, and he will deserve them. He, is, without question, the baddest man in college hoops.

Off the court? Less bad. Turner has always seemed like a friendly, laid-back type. But thanks to Mark Titus, we now know that Turner has a softer side, a side that enjoys synth-laden ear candy, a side that wants your ugly, wants your disease. Evan Turner wants your love (love love love, a ra ra ra).

What I'm saying is that Evan Turner really likes Lady Gaga. A lot:

The Villain is listening to Lady Gaga. I can’t make this up. … He’s listening to “Bad Romance”. On repeat. For 5th time.

SB Nation's Andrew Sharp wonders if there is a bracket-related conclusion to be drawn from Turner's enjoyment of "Bad Romance." I will refuse to draw any such conclusion. Doing so would force me to likewise draw conclusions about literally every single woman I know (seriously, women in their 20s and 30s love Lady Gaga), almost every single one of my friends, and myself.

What? It's not my fault Lady Gaga writes insanely catchy hooks. Stop looking at me like that!

Thursday, I made note of Iowa guard Devan Bawinkel's "12 trillion," the stat by which Bawinkel played 12 whole minutes of a basketball game without registering a single other statistic, thus giving him the famed trillion pioneered by Ohio State walk-on genius Mark Titus. (You already know about Titus by now, don't you?)

The 12 trillion is a remarkable and unfortunate thing; Titus has clear rules against extending any trillion past three or four minutes because there comes a point when the stat stops being polite and starts getting real, and that's when you realize you're actually just hurting your team. The trillion's not so fun then.

Anyway, both I and Adam Jacobi from Black Heart Gold Pants thought Bawinkel's trillion had to be the longest in history. It's almost impossible to play that many minutes of basketball without committing a foul or taking a shot or dropping a dime, right? Wrong. One intrepid Hawkeye Lounge reader called up a list of recorded trillions, the longest of them being -- get this -- 31 trillion. 31 trillion!

It's true. On Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2001, Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils guard Elvis Robinson played an entire 31 minutes -- second most on his team -- without recording a single stat. 31 trillion. You can see the box score right here. It's ... it's beautiful. It really is.

So feel better, Devan Bawinkel. Your 12 trillion is still quite a feat. But it's a long way to the top if you want to be king of the trillion mountain. Which you don't.

Ohio State super-scrub Mark Titus culminated a brilliant home career with one final trillion Tuesday night. Titus has made the trillion a more popular statistic than free throw rate, but for those unfamiliar, a trillion is registered when a scrub gets in for the final minute of the game but fails to make any other statistical impact during that game. The player ends up with a 1 in the minutes column and 13 zeros across the board. How Titus came up with this is beyond me, but it's pretty awesome -- the true test of how scrubariffic your team's last walk-on really is.

Still, there are rules here. You don't want to be racking up trillions in any way, shape or form. Too many minutes in the game without a single statistical record and you become less an oddity and more of a detriment. Which is why Iowa's Devan Bawinkel might have a little shame spiral action this morning. As noticed by Black Heart Gold Pants, Bawinkel posted a trillion -- in 12 minutes. 12 trillion!

This would seem impressive, but again, folks, there are rules. Let's go to Titus, the Tril-father himself, for a dissertation therein:

The reason a five trillion is actually worse than a four trillion is because there has to be a point in which the player is no longer playing the role of benchwarmer soaking up the scrub time, but is instead playing the role of "guy who could make his way into the rotation if he didn’t choose to do absolutely nothing with his opportunity". Someone who is playing five minutes in a game and isn’t doing anything of importance is basically just wasting everyone’s time. The fact that they’ve managed to get more than four minutes means that they shouldn’t be treated as a scrub for that particular game, because scrub time officially starts with four minutes left and a 20 point lead. As such, because they haven’t been dubbed a "scrub" ("dub a scrub" is a fun phrase) they have an obligation to entertain the crowd with their play instead of trying to be inefficient by getting a trillion. When scrubs get trillions, it’s riveting stuff. When guys playing five or more minutes get trillions, it’s borderline depressing.

This is not a ringing endorsement. Still, I think Bawinkel's in the clear. He wasn't trying (you weren't, right Devan?) to register a 12 trillion in the scoreline, so it's not as though he was intentionally hurting his team, and if Bawinkel was being completely ineffective -- which, uh, yeah -- it's his coach's job to take him out of the game. Instead, Bawinkel played hard. He just happened to do something unintentionally awesome in his otherwise forgetful 12 minutes. There's nothing wrong with that. Quite the opposite -- we should honor this accomplishment.

So congrats, Devan Bawinkel! You are quite probably the first 12 trillionaire in the history of college basketball statistics. A nation obsessed with ironic statistical minutiae salutes you.

• That's the argument made by Mike Miller at NBC. Most fans are probably noticing that Duke-North Carolina doesn't have the same flair in 2010 as it usually does, and that's for obvious reasons: The Tar Heels aren't very good. At 13-10 overall and 2-6 in the ACC, UNC has squandered a wealth of a talent and a high preseason ranking, and most sane predictions would have Duke rolling over the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill tonight. Then again, Duke isn't the best road team in the world, and it's not like North Carolina lacks talent. So hey, maybe Mike's right. Maybe this thing is a classic. We can hope, can't we?
• Similarly, Stewart Mandel argues that despite a loss of luster, Duke-UNC's stakes "couldn't be higher."
• Much has been made of Duke's "decline" this year. After the Georgetown loss, the buzz was that Duke wasn't dominant anymore, and thus wasn't fun to hate. (You would think it would be more fun to hate a team that's not playing well; you get to point and laugh far more frequently. But I guess not.) In any case, UNC fan blog Carolina March actually dug up a decade's worth of tempo-free numbers and examined this so-called decline. Disclaimer: This is a UNC blog discussing Duke, so don't expect an unbiased analysis. But the numbers do speak for themselves.
• Want the inside scoop on Arizona's NCAA violations? Here's your must-read.
• John Calipari posted a Twitpic (something the youngs do when they're sharing photos online, or something) depicting John Wall sitting down for a Slam photo shoot in a blatantly mispelled Kentucky jersey. Rather than the normal spelling, the state is spelled "K-e-n-t-c-u-k-y," which would be very difficult for a play-by-play announcer to pronounce. The reason? Calipari wanted to test Kentucky fans' powers of observation. They're apparently better than mine, because it took me like five minutes to figure out what letters were misspelled. I need a Red Bull.
• Gonzaga fans are loving the re-emergence of the Zags' big men.
• Kyle Whelliston writes a typically excellent essay on the importance of a coach's name on the floor, and how that importance weighs against the celebrity status of the average major-college coach in 2010.
• Speaking of "typically excellent," Mr. Mark Titus has a new blog post today. Are you excited? I know you're excited. Prepare for passages like this: "For the past few years, I’ve been told by various people throughout the Ohio State basketball program that I 'don’t do anything', and by various people I obviously mean Evan “The Villain” Turner. This idea stems from the fact that I’m not called upon to stay after practice and shoot extra shots, I don’t have to do all the drills the scholarship guys are required to do, and I’m really not expected to contribute in any way. I see where The Villain is coming from, but still, I like to think that putting up 19 points in a 90 minute practice last year counts as me doing something, not to mention the various other instances over the past few years in which I’ve been virtually unguardable." And that's only the first paragraph.
• The CAA is kicking into high gear, and CAA Hoops has devised what I consider to be a awesome aptitude for alliteration. They're calling it "the official CAA Season Shaper Stretch." It rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?
• The Quad has a full rundown of crucial mid-major conference games you should be paying attention to Wednesday night.
• Dan Hanner asks: Why did Wisconsin abandon the interior so quickly against Illinois? The Badgers are usually preternaturally patient, and when the shots aren't falling, they're well-coached enough to use that swing offense to get post looks from block-to-block screens. And yet, after being punched in the mouth early by Illinois, they didn't do that. Weird.
• Sidney Lowe may or may not survive this season at NC State -- his ability to get some serious competition out of a team most picked to finish last in the ACC bears some consideration in that decision -- but if he does, his group of young players could be dancing again, writes Jeff Goodman.
• South Carolina's Devan Downey was held out of Tuesday's practice, but it looks like he'll be ready to play Florida tonight. I'm sure the Gators are thrilled.
• Oh, in case you were wondering, Connecticut interim coach George Blaney will be coaching at Syracuse this evening. Blaney has no idea when Calhoun will return.
• Jarvis Varnado is steadily closing in on the NCAA's all-time blocks record; Joe Lemire details the march.
• And from the ESPN section of the college hoops world, be sure to check out Pat Forde's latest Minutes, which includes a rather awesome list of the best and worst cities in college basketball. Also see: Andy Katz's quick hitters from a snow-logged travel session Monday, Dana O'Neil's live chat at 2 p.m. ET today.

As always, follow me on Twitter to send me links and tips. Try to avoid the midwestern earthquakes.

• John Gasaway takes a brief glimpse at how zone defense affects shot selection -- We assume it forces offenses to take more threes, but is that really true? The answer is yes, by an extra three for every 10 minutes of basketball played. That's not a huge deal in a single game, but it does have an appreciable effect over the course of the season, doesn't it?
• Luke Winn busts out a bit of power ranking mojo. Power rankings are always fun, unless you're the type of person who takes them way too seriously. (MY PATS ARE RANKED FOURTH?! IT IS CLEAR THEY SHOULD BE RANKED THIRD!!) Are you the kind of person that likes to argue about power rankings? Don't be. Power rankings matter even less than the coaches' poll, which matters even less than the AP top 25. You'll be a much happier person if you learn to treat power rankings whimsically. Trust me.
• Ballin' Is A Habit (and plenty of other hoops blogs and scribes, no doubt) received a letter from the still-ineligible Renardo Sidney's lawyer, Don Jackson, today. His words: "The NCAA has badgered and intimiated this athletic department into sacrificing this student-athlete. Statements from athletic department personnel (from early on) regarding the University's protecting of their interests now appear to imply the University's protection of their interests translates to their sacrificing this student-athlete with out [sic] justification." Sigh. Every day Jackson needlessly grandstands, his client loses another opportunity to play basketball before the NBA draft in the spring. If this was the strategy, why not just skip college and go overseas? Or hire an agent and start training for NBA scouts? Why even keep up the charade? The Renardo Sidney case has been bad for everyone -- Sidney himself, Sidney's family, Mississippi State -- not named Don Jackson. Update: Be sure to read Andy Katz's just-posted Daily Word on this subject. It has Mississippi State's response to Jackson's charge that the school hasn't been trying to get Sidney eligibile, as well as plenty of other new details.
• In case you're just tuning into the hoops season -- apparently lots of people do this the day after college football is over; who knew? -- NBC's Mike Miller has a midseason study guide ready for you. There will be a quiz on Monday. Study up.
• Kentucky Sports Radio hears from someone who hears from someone that President Obama thinks John Wall is a good basketball player. It's safe to assume this, even if Obama never said it. If he did? All the better.
• The ACC season is bearing down on Miami, which means it's time to see just how good Frank Haith's team really is.
• Mark Titus details his run-ins with Big Ten student sections. Michigan? Underwhelming. Purdue? Fearsome. Titus and the Buckeyes play at Mackey Arena Tuesday, and Titus is preparing himself by challenging Purdue fans to do their worst. This feels a little like waving a piece of bloody fish in front of a tiger shark and then seeing if it will bite, but even so, it should be entertaining. (Come to think of it, so is watching someone wave fresh fish in front of sharks. If Shark Week has proven anything, it's this.)
• CAA fans are starting to think about their conference's tourney chances, which are better when the league is imbalanced. That is not the case in 2009-10.

Ohio State benchwarmer Mark Titus would be unremarkable -- another nameless, faceless short guy at the end of a college hoops bench -- were it not for his much-loved blog, Club Trillion.

In the past year, Club Trillion has managed to become the most popular player-written college hoops blog in the world. It might also be the most popular independent athlete blog in any league, anywhere. That's because Titus is whip-smart and unusually funny, and his hoops posts manage to take readers inside the life of a college hoops player, a world most of us rarely get to see. If you're not reading Club Trillion already (and if you're reading this blog, you probably are) you should be.

Why do I bring all this up? Because the New York Times's Pete Thamel did a feature and a related blog post on Titus today. The verdict? Mark Titus is hilarious, even when he's not blogging:

Matta’s favorite moment came seconds before tip-off of the tournament’s championship game in 2007.

“For what it’s worth,” Matta recalled Titus telling him as the starters took the floor, “I got five fouls to give.” Titus then pointed at the end of the bench and said, “I’ll be right down here if you need me.”

Matta cracks up while recalling the story. “It was good for me then; I needed it,” he said.

Like I said: Mark Titus is funny.

Thamel's blog post is less interested in Titus' humor than in the way his blog sets a precedent for athlete-fan communication. We've heard this story before. (Media types tend to be more obsessed about this topic than most. You can guess why.) It goes like this: Athletes don't need media middlemen anymore; fans can watch the game and see the highlights on Sportscenter, and rather than read postgame quotes in a story, they can go straight to the athlete's Twitter page for what media new-agers would call "unfiltered access." This is all true. And for pro athletes, it works well. But for college guys, the chances of Titus' example becoming widespread seem far less likely. College athletes are far more cloistered away from the media by athletic departments and their PR wings. They're protected in ways professional athletes really aren't. Matta trusts Titus to write his blog posts without "crossing any lines." How many coaches would reciprocate?

That's unfortunate, because more information is almost always a good thing. But for now, it seems likely Mark Titus will remain one of a kind. At least we have one of him.

Soon, there will be a better name for this than "Afternoon Linkage." Or, I should say, if the new name isn't exactly better, it will at least sound like there was some iota of thought involved before the fingers started hitting the keys. That much I can promise. In the meantime, off we go. (As always, if you have links or sites you want to submit for consideration, hit me up on Twitter.)

• Kansas holds the fort. For now. The Coaches' Poll should probably be ignored as much as possible. It sounds counterintuitive, but coaches are not national basketball prognosticators; their knowledge is intensely focused on their own team and on that team's next few opponents. As it should be. But hey, the polls are fun to glance at on Monday morning, and today's no different, as Kansas managed to hold on to its No. 1 overall ranking yet again. This is despite the emergence of Texas, which is also unbeaten and had a victory over North Carolina on Saturday that was far more impressive than KU's limpy win over a struggling Michigan team.
• What I'm trying to say is that Michigan can't score to save its life. Speaking of Michigan, Dylan at UM Hoops is still trying to figure out what's wrong with the Wolverines, who were ranked (OK, so perhaps they were a bit overrated) in the top 25 to begin the season. To be more precise, Dylan has figured it out: Michigan can't shoot. Like, at all. And the Wolverines aren't deep or talented enough to overcome it.
• Meanwhile, back in Lexington ... Kentucky fans have a lot going on. There's Monday night's game against Drexel, which is a big deal because if (when) Kentucky wins, it will become the first program in college basketball history to achieve 2,000 wins. That's an arbitrary number, sure, but it does convey some level of superiority, and you can bet Wildcat fans will be sure to bask in it. Then, after that little piece of business is handled, UK boosters can get back to being angry (perhaps rightfully) at Bob Knight and various other media members over last week's comments about John Calipari's supposed lack of integrity.
• Things keep getting worse for Iowa. I promise I'm not trying to spend my first day on the new blog bashing Iowa -- I'm from Iowa, after all; my friends will disown me if I keep this up -- but an already talent-bereft team just suspended guard Anthony Tucker for public intoxication in Iowa City. Seriously, someone throw Todd Lickliter a bone. This is just getting silly.
• Up a Creek without a paddle (but with a pretty effective outside jumper). Hey, Maurice Creek pun! Fun for the whole family. (Sorry. Won't happen again.) The point of that bad pun? To clue you in on Indiana frosh Maurice Creek, who is quietly averaging 18 points a game in his first season as a Hoosier and who seems to be getting better with every game.
• Does Willie Warren miss Blake Griffin? That's not fair. We all miss Blake Griffin. Remember when he hit his head on the backboard? That was awesome. But Warren might be missing Griffin more than most, as Sports Illustrated's Seth Davis writes today: "A closer look, however, reveals a more troubling picture. The latest snapshot came on Saturday, when Warren took six shots, scored four points and committed five turnovers as Oklahoma, which has fallen from a No. 17 preseason ranking out of the AP poll, barely squeaked by Northern Colorado at home, 80-79. After the game, Sooners coach Jeff Capel referred to Warren's desultory performance by saying, 'I'm tired of trying to figure him out.'" Eesh.
• Congrats, Gus Johnson. You were the best college basketball announcer of the decade, according to Searching For Billy Edelin. I have absolutely no problem with this.
• Long live the King. King Shark. Or something. It wouldn't be an inaugural batch of links if I didn't include Ohio State's Mark Titus in the mix, whose personal blog still manages to be sublimely funny even now, after the novelty has long since worn off. Go forth and read it. It's worth it for the occasionally horrifying glance into Titus' brain alone.