Tapak, Roberts, Johnson bid the Hall farewell

Evelyn Tapak had to pinch herself Saturday.\nHer son, Ryan Tapak, was playing his last game at Assembly Hall. It was a sight that four years ago, Evelyn would have never foreseen. \n"I didn't even think he was going to go play college basketball," she said. \nToward the end of Tapak's senior year at Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis, Evelyn Tapak remembers a conversation she had with her son when his basketball future was in doubt.\n"I said, 'Ryan, I think you can go play ball somewhere in Division I.' And Ryan said, 'No, I want to go to IU.' And I said, 'No, I don't think you can play Division I, Big Ten. You're just not the size,'" Evelyn said. \nBut Tapak did just that. After he graduated from high school, he joined the YMCA and started lifting weights. When he was trying out for the Hoosiers, he didn't tell his mother how it was going.\nThen, the day he made the cut, Tapak called home.\n"I called home and left a message that they could get my shoes out of retirement because I made the team," Tapak said.\nAfter receiving word of her son being an Indiana Hoosier, Evelyn Tapak said she got emotional.\n"When he called and told us he was the next Indiana Hoosier, I just cried, I just cried," Evelyn Tapak said. "He's just a little guy and he wanted to go to IU and now he's playing basketball. I couldn't believe it."\nFour years later, Tapak stood underneath the north basket at Assembly Hall, a microphone resting in a stand in front of him. Fellow seniors Mike Roberts and Mark Johnson waited to speak. \nAs he began, tears started to well in his eyes. His senior day speech was going to be tougher than expected.\n"You know, I told myself all week that it was going to be easy to talk to you guys," Tapak told the remaining Assembly Hall crowd after the Hoosiers blew out Northwestern, 77-55.\nWhen the senior started his speech, Tapak thanked all of his teammates, the cheerleaders, the team managers, the fans and his coaches. He thanked IU coach Mike Davis. He thanked administrative assistant Dane Fife -- who was once a teammate of Tapak's during the 2001-2002 season.\n"It's hard going from somebody who picked on me my freshman year to calling him coach," Tapak said.\nThe skinny No. 34 said he came to Bloomington weighing 145 pounds. He is now listed at 180. Tapak said if you looked at him now you would think the strength coaches didn't do a good job. But they need a raise, Tapak said.\nAnd the end of his speech, Tapak handed the mike to the next speaker, his good friend Johnson. The pair of walk-ons have become synonymous in their four years in Bloomington. Evelyn Tapak said the two are often mistaken for each other.\nAssembly Hall public address announcer Chuck Crabb fell into the same trap when he called Mark Johnson Ryan. \nJohnson quickly corrected Crabb.\n"I'm Mark, that's Ryan," Johnson said before he began his speech. "It happens at least once a day, maybe twice."\nPrior to the speeches, the pair of walk-ons, who've battled their respective ups and downs for four years, ended their last regular season game by passing the ball back and forth as the time wound down.\n"It kind of symbolized all we've been through the past four years," Johnson said.\nJohnson said it hadn't really hit him that it was over. And while Evelyn Tapak has to pinch herself to believe her son is playing at IU, the end of that four-year run came sooner than expected.\n"I can't believe it's over," she said.\n-- Contact Staff Writer John Rodgers at jprodger@indiana.edu.