Chapter 91 National Championship 3
The game continued like this, sometimes the Cats tried a shot of 3 and hit and on the other side Elite team hit almost all attacks but only made the safest 2 points.
As expected by coach Mike the player in whom the Cats were the most chosen to attack was Santiago who was being scored by Harrison, Jake was very good in his defense and David also managed to steal a lot of balls, so Harrison was the weakness of the defense Elite team.
Jake was not worried about it, he thought it might be even good, as the distance from the line of 3 in the Middle School was smaller than in the NBA it was normal for skilled players to hit rate was higher.
Even so the normal for a skilled player was to hit one of three per average in a game, which means that the Cats team would lose two attacks to make a 3-point.
Usually not to lose so many attacks to the teams that did a lot of shots from outside, they looked for players that could receive more rebounds like Center and PF, that was what Jake was calm.
In the defense, Mark and Carter were the only ones that disputed who took more rebounds and few finished in the hands of the attack to have another chance.
As proved by the end of the first period Jake's team was ahead of them by 3 points difference, it could be a difference of just one attack for the Cats team, but for Jake, it was a safe advantage.
In the second period coach, Mike made a small change and asked Carter to support Harrison to score Santiago, so Santiago's strike rate began to drop, so Lincon and Rick started to try more shots from outside as well.
On the attack side of the Elite team seeing that Mark and Carter had already entered the game more and were confident after making several points, Jake thought it was time for a few shots of 3 as well.
He had to rely on Mark and Carter to take advantage of the rebounds and so do not miss the attacks, Jake passed the ball to David and motioned for him to try a shot of 3 if he had the opportunity.
David was thrilled with this as well and agreed, David's reason for not being overly anxious and correctly following the coping strategies the coach and Jake did was that he realized it was the surest way to victory.
But that does not mean that he did not like to do what he did before, was that now he asked for permission before, David who had the ball made a feint and then a step back to try a shot from outside and make the 3 points later.
The Cats did not expect that in the second period the Elite team that was always ahead in the score was to try a shot of 3, although it was what the Cats wanted before the game started, seeing that they controlled the rebounds, it did not make much sense to this strategy.
Rick commanded another attack and gave the ball to Santiago who received the double marking soon after and not to risk giving the pass to Lincon that received and tried the shot of 3, on the pressure of the mark of Mark ended up missing the shot and Mark picked up another rebound.
The ball was passed to Jake who began to advance to the attack, so while the Elite team organized in the attack before reaching the line of 3 points as it had no mark, Jake made the Set Shot and was able to make 3 more points for his team.
The Cats' defense did not expect that, and everyone had to admire Jake's ability to hit a shot from 3 yards without having to jump, it made a totally unexpected move, and it was clear that Jake did it with confidence who could make the points and not just to try.
The advantage was even greater, the game continued with the Cats team hitting a few shots of 3 and increased their score, but sometimes erring and losing their attack, on the other side the Elite team tried sometimes the shots of 3 and hardly lost the attacks with Mark taking the rebounds.
At the end of the second period, the Elite team led the score by 10 points, as it was 4 attacks for the Cats team he still did not lose hope in the victory, however, taking out the rebounds everyone realized that the Elite team defense was very passive.
So in the third period, the Cats team were more concerned about hitting the shots off than the opposing defense, so in a moment of attack, Lincon received the ball and was thinking about how to get space to give the shot of 3 when David saw an opportunity and stole the ball from Lincon.
As he had the free court ahead to attack David who had confidence in his speed just ran and then did a layup to increase the lead in 2 more points.
Lincon had to acknowledge that he was very inattentive and missed an attack more did not care much about it, then in another attack, Rick who made a feint was preparing to try another shot of 2 when Jake stole his ball, then Jake ran to the attack to make 2 more points with a layup.
Almost at the end of the third period Rick tried a pass to Santiago and the ball was intercepted by Jake again who picked up the ball and made 2 more points with another layup, so at the end of the third period the Elite team was ahead of the score by 17 points and they had almost guaranteed victory.
With three steals that passed without disturbing the team of Cats who were accustomed to losing attack by their 3-point shots, the course of the game took a path expected for the Elite team's victory.
At the beginning of the fourth period the Cats team that had not yet given up began to rush to try the shots from outside, but as they were already in the fourth period and were trying to shoot outside the entire game players were already tired, so Jake saw that Rick would try a shot anyway and made a block to reject the attack.
This was the final blow to the Cats' willingness to give up trying and so the game was only run by the Elite team in the fourth period and at the end of the game, they had won by 22 points.
As it had been shown in this game Elite team showed that it had both attack and defense in that game, so they stood up as one of the favorites in the reporters' view to win the national championship.
But this was still the second game and there were 4 left for the final, so none of the reporters bothered Jake and his colleagues with questions, it was still not too late to interview them later if they got close to the final.
Eric also did not ask any questions yet in this national championship and only took the photos for his report, but not for the same reason of the others and but because for him it was not necessary for the moment, after all, he had already asked the basic things and now just near the end more questions were needed.
Jake went home soon after the game to tell his mother about his victory, after he told her and saw Eva being relieved they dined and went to rest despite Jake having a much greater resistance with his stats increasing he was very tired after the games.
At school, in the following days, many people were happy that their school continued to be featured in various sports, but some people started to get sad after school teams came to the national competition despite good performance, many teams began to arrive at its limits.
After all, although the president had invested a lot in sports that first year, it was not enough to be a benchmark in all sports and many teams did not have the strength to fight for the national championship trophy, that should be normal.
But for the coaches who just aimed at winning after they were hired this was a disaster, and he could not blame the players because they were just students yet even Jake who gets money from the school could not be guilty if his team lost.
So that responsibility that had to be passed on to someone else was kept for the coaches of the teams, so the team coaches, especially the major sports teams who received the most investment, became increasingly anxious about this situation.
So coach Mike was spending these weeks much more stressed, Jake wanted to be able to comfort the coach, but since he had also been an employee in a company he knew that everyone had to live with the stress of their responsibilities.
Jake wanted to promise that he would win the national championship, but even he did not know what level of skill the strongest opponent of that national championship was, Jake could still see that Carter was not so calm and Carter was the one who knew how strong the champion was.
So despite wanting to secure the trophy Jake could not, he had made the mistake of being very presumptuous last year and suffered what he could to play his best and try to win game by game, so the trophy would get closer and closer.