Dear Tyler,

I’ve never been one for writing letters, but given the spirit of the holiday season, I feel I owe you an apology.

You see, Tyler, I doubted you. Actually, doubt is not a strong enough word. I wrote you off, stuck a fork in your back and kicked you to the curb. It would have been hard not to.

The sparks were flying for a while there in November and December. Things were fresh, exciting, new. You were shooting better than 50 percent from the 3 and actually cleaning up a bit on the glass as well. I was nervous you were leading me on for the first few weeks, but after you sent Gardner-Webb packing at the last second, I started to believe we had something special.

Then the cracks started to surface. It wasn’t obvious at first — a 1-for-7 appearance here, a one-rebound performance there — but they slowly grew into chasms that were too wide to ignore.

The chemistry from December was simply gone. The easy-going confidence and stroke were nowhere to be seen. It reached a tipping point after you stood me up twice in one week. I ended my Christmas break early, driving all the way back to Champaign from Nashville, to see you and you failed to show up. All I got for my troubles was a scoreless, two-rebound no-show against Minnesota before the truly abysmal, two-point, one-rebound showing in Madison against Wisconsin.

It was clear we needed a break. You were stripped of your starter’s duties and relegated to the bench, but nothing seemed to get your attention. You looked lost out on the court, your mojo a thing of the past. You were afraid to shoot. You had become a stretch-the-defense power forward that no longer could stretch the defense. You were a punch line (OK, so admittedly many of the jokes were mine).

Things reached rock bottom against Wisconsin the second time, a laughable performance in which you played just eight minutes, your lowest total of the season, and recorded only one stat kept in the official box score: a single personal foul. It wasn’t even fun to poke fun at you any longer, I just felt sorry for piling on.

The fork was dug so deep in your back the prongs were dug into the floor. You hadn’t connected on a 3 in more than a month, a remarkable 0-for-22 stretch. There was no way you could rekindle the flame, especially not with top-ranked Indiana next on the menu.

And then it happened, randomly, spontaneously, serendipitously. Incredibly, you returned from the dead. It started with a couple rebounds, a few hustle plays. You were showing that you still cared. I took notice and made a couple notes of it, but thought nothing more of it.

But down 11 with 16 minutes left and Indiana on the verge of blowing the game open, you nailed your first 3 in weeks and my heart skipped a beat. Six minutes later you sunk another one.

And then, improbably, came that fateful moment when you slipped free from your man and found yourself all alone under the basket. In 0.9 seconds, every struggle and strife was erased, as the ball slid from your fingertips off the backboard and through the hoop, and the crowd swarmed the court.

But you didn’t stop there, instead following up on that magical moment with a 16-point effort that saw you drain four more 3’s to aid the Illini’s toppling of Minnesota on the road.

There is still work to be done, certainly, and the cracks have yet to totally heal. Hurt that deep tends to linger, and while you’ve sucked me back in, a voice in the back of my head is warning me from getting too emotionally invested.

But for now the times are good, so I’ll ignore that voice and live in the moment.

Love,

Daniel

Daniel is a senior in Media. He can be reached at [email protected].