Chapter 426 - 1998 NCAA Tournament 8 (1/2)

Yuen Woo-ping wanted Jake to do very well in this film to be praised for his effort to learn the fight scenes, moreover, if he could teach Jake a lot of things he could invite him to a fight film in the future in Hollywood or even Hong Kong.

The truth was that for Jake's character in this film, his fighting skills would be more important than his acting skills, Jake had a lot of acting skills also because of the years he trained in his life before going back in time.

Jake naturally knew that and his goal was not to be recognized as the best actor in the film, in fact, he was very concerned that his character could disrupt the story he knew and thus the film would not be that good.

Jake just wanted to have an important character in a movie that would be a success, so he would be proud and could be called an actor even if he did not make any more films in the future, Jake knew that with NBA games it would be almost impossible for him to find time to participate in the films.

But his career as a professional basketball player would not last forever, after the age of 45 he would certainly not be playing anymore, so Jake could continue working as an actor while running the marathons and running his businesses.

Of course, no one knew that Jake thought about it and Yuen Woo-ping thought that Jake's goal was to be a famous actor and wanted to help him with that, the directors who worked with him also thought about it and were counting on Jake in the future.

After a few days Jake continued training with Yuen Woo-ping and the basketball team went back to training for the next game, the Tar Heels team players were confident and excited for the next game.

Everyone thought that the Tar Heels team would go to the final of the NCAA tournament this season and win again and that enthusiasm was affecting the players too, Jake was the most concerned about it and Coach Guthridge too.

Before the first day of training after the break, Jake decided to speak to Coach Guthridge about his concerns, after all in the past the Tar Heels team lost to the opposing team of that game when Jake did not play.

Jake told Coach Guthridge that he was very concerned and thought that the Tar Heels team might not win the next game, so he thought it was better for the players to train more before the next game.

Listening to this made Coach Guthridge even more concerned, he really thought the next game against the Utah Utes team would be very difficult, listening to Jake he was sure of it now after all the Utah Utes team had an even better defense than the UConn Huskies team which caused many problems for the Tar Heels team's attack.

The Utah Utes team had a very strong defense that had taken over 70 points against just two opponents in the entire season, the next opponent the Utah Utes team was having a great season losing few games and even winning against the Arizona Wildcats team that he lost to the Tar Heels team in the semifinal of the NCAA tournament last season, but he would have won the NCAA tournament had it not been for Jake on the team.

This showed the strength of the Utah Utes team that they lost last season to the team that played in the final against Team Tar Heels, because of that Coach Guthridge changed his mind and decided to do intense training with the team in the next few days.

Before that Jake told what really happened in the last game that he made 6 shots out of 6 strokes in a row without passing the ball to anyone because he was angry at the poor performance of his teammates in that game.

He apologized and his teammates were surprised by this and accepted the apology and liked Jake's honesty, they knew that Jake was not arrogant and normally didn't do that and that he should be suffering from the pressure like all of them.

But what nobody knew was that Coach Guthridge would agree with Jake that the team played poorly at the beginning of the 2nd half of the last game and said that the team had to train harder if they wanted to have the chance to win in the next game and also in the final game if they won against the Utah Utes team.

So over the next few days, the training was really intense with the coach taking care not to make the players tired too much, coach Guthridge told the team to be careful with Michael Doleac and Andre Miller from the Utah Utes team.

He also said that in the next game Jake would have to make more three-point moves to try to break the Utah Utes team's defense, and they too would have to defend very well if they wanted to have a chance to win.

To defend against the Utah Utes Doleac Center, Coach Guthridge decided to take Williams out of the starting team and put N'Diaye to strengthen the defense, N'Diaye had already been in many games as a reserve to help the defense of the Tar Heels team and that it had worked very well.