Chapter 305 1997 ACC Mens Basketball Tournament 1 (1/2)

Before the game began Coach Smith assembled the team and made a speech to motivate the players, he did not do it in every game and only in the most important games, it gave even more pressure to the players.

”9, 12 and 0, do you know what these three numbers represent this season?”

”At the beginning of the season we had a 9-win streak, and we lost to the Wake Forest Demon team and our winning streak dropped to 0 and our losing streak went to 1.”

”In today's game our winning streak is 12, does anyone want to see that number turn 0 again? If you don't want to see this don't think about losing this game.”

”With that only 4 games left until the end of Regular Season, and we are in first place at the conference which is a great honor, I want to continue like this and have no defeat for the next games.”

After Coach Smith finished talking the whole team was much more excited and excited for this game, they knew they were favorites again and didn't want to miss this game either, plus there was one more thing Coach Smith didn't have the heart to say.

In the last game Coach Smith had left Jake in reserve and did not put him to play for many minutes, this game was different and Jake was from the beginning of the game and this gave more confidence to his teammates.

Everyone had to admit that Jake was very important to the team even though he was just a freshman, after all, Jake helped by making points, assisting, and still defending, so they were not ashamed to say that they were somewhat dependent on Jake's good performances.

This game was no different and if the Tar Heels team won everyone knew that part of the merit would be for Jake who made the difference, so after a few minutes the game began.

In the early minutes the Tar Heels team started strong, they pressed harder on defense and put more effort into attacking moves, yet Coach Smith put no special defense against Duncan.

Unlike Coach Smith, the opposing coach left two players to defend in Jake's position, which was because the coach was confident that Duncan could put pressure on the defense even though he had one less player in his defensive area.

After a few minutes Jake received the ball and advanced to the attacking court, after passing the middle of the court he passed the ball to Carter, Carter advanced to the left and after the three-point line went to Okulaja which was more open.

Okulaja received the ball more freely because Duncan did not want to risk leaving the inner area to defend against him, but so another player who was responsible for marking Jake had to leave his position and defend against Okulaja.

Okulaja seemed to expect something like this and passed it to Jake who was behind him, Jake received the ball and easily got rid of his marker, with space he tried to shoot three points to make 3 more points for the team Tar Heels.

This was the second time a move like this had happened, with only one player defending against him, Duncan was easily able to make individual plays and points, while with two players defending against Jake the Tar Heels team was freer to make the plays.

So Jake had some opportunities to make 2 three-point plays for the Tar Heels team attack, so the Tar Heels team had the advantage in the first half, the game continued like this for a few minutes.

With Duncan inside, the Tar Heels team did not attack much in the indoor pitch, so Carter and Jamison were getting more balls, just as Okulaja didn't risk three-point shots because Duncan could almost certainly get the rebound.

Seeing this Coach Smith risked and put Williams in place of Okulaja and so wanted to see if that would give the team more chances to attack while weakening their team's defense, this made the players of team Tar Heels more excited.

”With more than 9 minutes into the game, Coach Smith seems to want to risk more than at the start of the game, putting Shammond Williams in place of Ademola Okulaja the three-point attack plays strengthen as the defense weakens.”

”From the beginning of this game we can see that Coach Smith wants to compete to see which attack is stronger, normally I would say it's the safest attack with Tim Duncan that has only one player scoring him, but with Jake in the plays of three points, I can't say that.”

”It's true, from the start of this game we can see that team manager Wake Forest Demon is very concerned about Jake putting two players in, yet Jake has scored 8 points so far 6 points in two three-point plays.”