Chapter 307 1997 ACC Mens Basketball Tournament 3 (1/2)

Before the match against the Clemson Tigers team Coach Davis finished the new training plan for Jake, so he sought out Jake the day before the match against the Clemson Tigers team.

Coach Davis knew naturally that Jake should be busy for the next day's game, but his job was just to create the training plan and see how Jake was executing that training plan.

It was Jake who decided which day to train and if he agreed to follow that training plan, Coach Davis also followed up some Jake training with the basketball team that also included training at the university academy.

Even though Coach Davis was required to be flexible and did not add any gym training to Jake and just ordinary training, he also decided to maintain Jake's 50 km of training and just added some aerobic and cardiovascular exercises.

That was Jake's daily training routine and some training would also have to be changed a few weeks before competitions or when Jake was on vacation, with that training enough for Jake to be able to run in the three modalities he wanted to try for a gold medal at the Olympics.

With more time Coach Davis would also add some positioning training and other techniques needed to run shorter distances, with the lack of training time that was what he could prepare for Jake.

If Jake was a full-time athlete he could prepare for training at various times of the day and even elsewhere besides the track where Jake was currently training, unfortunately, Coach Davis knew that Jake was trying hard to take some time to train.

So Coach Davis made sure to give Jake this training plan and explain why it was so similar to his current training, Jake understood what Coach Davis was saying and was happy with the coach's consideration.

Jake agreed with the coach that on his vacation he would have more time to know what Coach Davis's full training was like, after all, Jake still had the classes he attended every day and another month of games with the basketball team before the holidays.

If the team reached the NCAA tournament final there would still be 10 games left by the end of the season, so naturally Jake wanted the team to reach the NCAA tournament final, the reason Coach Smith is rotating the team now is the ACC tournament.

If the team reaches the final they would have to play 3 games in 3 straight days without any rest, Coach Smith naturally had confidence in his team and hoped they would reach the ACC tournament final.

After the last game the Tar Heels team spent the next few days training for the last game of Regular Season, they now came from a sequence of 15 straight wins and already had one of the best seasons in history for the Tar Heels team.

This last Regular Season game would be even more special, it was a game at Dean Smith Center against their rival team Duke Blue Devils, in the last game they had a tough game even with Jake playing the whole game and doing a double-double.

So everyone hoped that even though the Tar Heels team had the advantage would be a difficult game, Jake was glad to hear that his friends would be watching the game and the Dean Smith Center should have the bleachers full of fans waiting to see the Tar Heels team win.

On the day of the game players were nervous even though they were playing at home, even though Jake was a little nervous about this game, Coach Smith didn't even need to cheer up the players because everyone knew how important winning this game was.

After a few hours, both teams were ready for the start of the game, Team Tar Heels was the favorite to win this game, but Team Duke Blue Devils was the second team in this conference.

At the beginning of the game contrary to what everyone expected Jake didn't have a double mark and only one player was placed to defend against him after all the team coach Duke Blue Devils knew that the whole team was strong and not just Jake.

With an average of over 30 points per game and several double-doubles, everyone was thinking that only Jake led the team in victory, but if it was well observed the rest of the whole team was having a great season in Jake's shadows.

Antawn Jamison averaged over 20 points per game and took just slightly fewer rebounds than Jake, Vince Carter also with his dunk and good indoor moves had more than 15 average points per game because he played less time sharing his time on the court with Shammond Williams.

In addition to them, Serge Zwikker and Ademola Okulaja were also having a great season and even Charlie McNairy and Ed Cota with less court time also played very well at the time they were on the court.