Chapter 395 The Last Major Marathon 9
In the first minutes of the overtime, the two teams were being very aggressive in attack, they were doing some turnovers because of that and the Georgia Tech players were still very good in the three-point shots and the Georgia Tech team managed to open an advantage on the scoreboard by because of that.
On the side of the Tar Heels team, their attack was with Cota making assists for Jamison and Carter, the Georgia Tech team’s defense was defending well against Williams and so Cota preferred to make the most correct plays to get the points.
Because of this, the Georgia Tech team opened an advantage on the scoreboard, but they also lost a lot of attacks because they tried only three-point shots and missed too, so in the last minutes the two teams were almost tied and Coach Guthridge asked for time to talk to the players.
He wanted to win this game and even though he thought that Ed Cota’s strategy was not wrong trying to score points in all attacks and not just try 3-point shots, to achieve the victory he thought the team depended on three-point shots Shammond Williams points.
"You are playing a great game today, we are under a lot of pressure because of this winning streak and in this game, we have no Jake and we are playing as a visitor and I know that you are now tired after playing for more than 40 minutes."
"But I need one last effort from you so that our team can achieve this victory, everyone is waiting to see our team losing this game, so they will say that without Jake our team cannot win.
"But I know that this is not true and that we have a whole good team and we don’t depend on just one player to win, it’s because of the whole team that we came to this incredible winning streak and not just because of Jake."
"So we’re going to win to prove it, I want to see you press on the defense so that the players on the opposing team get it wrong, and Ed, pass the ball to Williams that I trust he will bring victory to our team."
After hearing the words of motivation from Coach Guthridge, the players came back more motivated to guarantee victory in those last minutes, the Georgia Tech team was just one point ahead of the scoreboard and the Tar Heels team had everything to win.
The ball was with the Tar Heels team and so after a play, Williams was free to receive the ball and try a three-point shot and thus turn the score and put the Tar Heels team ahead with 2 points advantage.
The Georgia Tech team tried to retaliate soon after, but the Tar Heels defense was very good, putting pressure on her, so Maddox tried a three-point shot and missed, Jamison, caught the rebound and passed it to Ed Cota.
Ed Cota did not bother to spend time in possession and soon went on the attack, Shammond Williams again got freedom and tried another shot to hit and make 3 more points for the Tar Heels team and increase the advantage to 5 points.
It was less than a minute before the game was over and now the pressure was on the Georgia Tech team, they again attacked and tried a three-point shot and missed and so they became more anxious and the Tar Heels team attacked again.
Ed Cota held the ball to spend possession and at the end of the play Williams had the defense over him and so Cota passed to Jamison who tried to score and missed close range.
The Georgia Tech team attacked quickly and managed to hit a three-point shot and thus the advantage decreased to 2 points, but the playing time was over and the Tar Heels team won that game even without Jake on the team after overtime.
Jake celebrated a lot at the hotel and only after seeing his team winning that he can be really happy after winning the marathon, in the next game he would be playing and would not let the Tar Heels team lose again until he won the NCAA title.
"What an incredible game we are watching today, the Tar Heels team managed to win another game after arriving until the overtime in an exciting game against the Georgia Tech team, the star of Shammond Williams shone and with 34 points he was the best player of that game."
"Yes, it was really a very close game in which the Georgia Tech team also deserved to win the game with the excellent performance of Matt Harpring who scored 27 points in that game and Michael Maddox who scored 35 points in that game."
"But the Tar Heels team showed that they have an excellent team and even without Jake on the team they had the excellent game of Williams and Jamison who scored 26 points in that game, great game, and a deserved victory."
"For sure, in the next game, we hope that Jake Smith will be back on the team after winning a Tokyo marathon which is incredible and that the Tar Heels team will continue to win."
The Tar Heels team players were also happy with the victory and were not even upset that Jake lost that game, now they had confidence as well as Jake that they would not lose any game until they won the NCAA tournament
After a few hours of the game it was already a day in Tokyo and Jake took the plane to go back to the university, he would only know what would happen after he lost that game to run the Tokyo marathon when he returned to the university after 16 travel hours.
While Jake was on the plane it dawned in the United States after the victory of the Tar Heels team against the Georgia Tech team, just as Jake hoped the media just talked about it with criticism of Jake Smith and praise for the Tar Heels team.
The fans were very angry with Jake who lost a game to run a marathon which they thought was insignificant close to the game, luckily the Tar Heels team won and so their anger was less than Jake expected.
But the repercussions this had on companies negotiating an endorsement contract with David Falk were not small, Nike and Adidas seemed to be rethinking the whole deal and didn’t even want to talk to David again.
All companies that were thinking about talking about a deal with David gave up on the deal and said that in the future they would talk about it again if they were interested, and of the 5 companies that had made a verbal deal with David 1 of them officially gave up on the contract.
The other 4 would not give up because they had already made several deals with David and knew that it was not a good idea to break a verbal contract with him, besides, they were happy to know that Jake had won the Tokyo marathon because they were not interested only in Jake because of basketball.
All of these companies were interested in Jake’s fans at the marathons and looked forward to the next Olympics that Jake would participate in which they would get more advertising for having an endorsement contract with Jake that would likely win a gold medal.
So David was having a headache because of this, but he was already waiting for these problems when Jake said what they thought to do for him, David knew that Jake didn’t need that money and he didn’t need that much to despair because of it of this.
David Falk was confident that in the future he would get a lot more contracts with Jake and those contracts would pay him a few million dollars, now the ideal way to find the right companies to make endorsement contracts because in the future these companies would be Jake’s partners.
Fortunately, the Tar Heels team had not lost that game so if the Tar Heels team won the ACC title and the NCAA title the popularity would return again before the NBA draft, not to mention that Jake was in no hurry, even after the beginning of the basketball season they could get a much better sponsorship contract.
After a long trip Jake arrived at the university even more tired than before, this time it was better because he was already used to traveling for so many hours by plane, but he still had to rest well and just the next day he might be able to train.
When Jake arrived at the university the training of the basketball team was over, coach Guthridge was concerned when he saw that Shammond Williams who had been playing very well in the last games and was the main responsible for the victory in the last game was very tired and his physical condition his was not the best for the next game.
Coach Guthridge didn’t care about Jake because he already realized that his body worked differently from normal people and recovered faster, but Williams not, Coach Guthridge was already thinking about leaving him out of the next game.
After sleeping very well Jake was already much better the other day, he was still far from his ideal physical condition, but he still had another day before the next game which was also as a visitor, even if he was not in his ideal physical condition it was enough to play at least 30 minutes in his best condition.
Coach Guthridge also realized that Jake was not in the best physical condition during training, even though he knew that Jake would be better the other day it was impossible for him to be fully recovered.
This made him very stressed because he could no longer count on William who was playing very well if he did not have Jake in his best physical shape it would be difficult for the Tar Heels team to win this next game.
Jake’s teammates were also concerned to see that Jake was not doing as well as he normally was, but they knew they would have to rely on Jake in the next game where Williams would not play.
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