Run the Play

I am twenty-six years old and I have never played a minute of Division I basketball. What I have is a model. I built it in a rented room with a laptop and three years of film, and it got me hired, and it got us to 14–1. Then the head coach tore her Achilles, and the athletic director handed me the clipboard, and now I'm the youngest interim head coach in the country and every decision I make is on somebody's clipboard too. Daija Ellery is the best player I have ever watched and the worst thing that ever happened to my focus. She questions every substitution. She shows up at my office at midnight. She kissed me in a hotel elevator in February, and we agreed, in writing, that it would never happen again. Then a booster asked me to bench her, and I said no, and the athletic director gave me a choice. I chose her. I knew what it would cost. I chose her anyway.