Chapter 305 1997 ACC Men“s Basketball Tournament 1
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."
"That's why I understand what Coach Smith is trying to do, after all, Okulaja has been going out for several unmarked plays and has only made 2 points having missed two shots off with almost no marks."
"We'll see the rest of this first half if Coach Smith's bet pays off."
As it was said with Williams joining the team, the defensive force of the team dropped a lot, in another game almost after Shammond Williams joined, Jerry Braswell charged forward and passed the ball straight to Duncan.
Duncan was being tagged by Zwikker after Williams entered the game, yet Duncan was not intimidated by the new player on defense and after a spin made a dunk to score 2 points for Wake Forest Demon.
This was Wake Forest Demon's most played move in this game and so Duncan had 8 points in the first 10 minutes of the first half, he fears the ball with his back to the basket and either passed the ball or spin and made the points.
Still, team Tar Heels had the most points leading the scoreboard, after a few more free runs Shammond Williams was able to hit 2 shots out of 3 making 6 points in 4 attempts and Jake hit 1 more shot from outside in two attempts.
So when the first half was over Jake had played for 18 minutes and scored 17 points, 4 assists, 2 rebounds, and 4 steals, twice Jake managed to steal Tim Duncan's ball after offensive rebounds.
With this, the team Tar Heels finished the first half with great advantage and although Duncan scored many points his teammates were well scored and did not perform well in the first half.
"With the end of the first half we can see that Coach Smith's strategies are working more in this game, the Tar Heels team had the advantage in the whole first half, but after Shammond Williams took the place of Ademola Okulaja the Tar Heels team further opened up the lead."
"True, even allowing Tim Duncan to play more freely on Team Wake Forest Demon he could not make so much difference on his own doing just two-point plays, on defense Duncan can't help much either because Team Tar Heels attacks just far from where he defended."
"And they were right, everyone knows that Duncan is very good at offense, but plays much better at defense, just as Team Wake Forest Demon did not hesitate to send two players to mark Jake, team Tar Heels also did not hesitate to give up many attack rolls to avoid Duncan."
"Surely if at the beginning of the season the Tar Heels team had played like that they would have won, one still doesn't understand why Jake didn't play that game since his games before that game had been with Jake's great performances."
In the second half, team Tar Heels continued the same style of play and still had the biggest advantage on the scoreboard, after a few minutes the coach of Wake Forest Demon decided to take one of the defenders against Jake to mark Williams.
He thought that this way team Tar Heels would make a change and put Okulaja in the game and team Tar Heels would lose the three-point play, but Coach Smith wouldn't do something like that and kept Shammond Williams in the game and Jake had more freedom to play.
So Jake was told to keep trying outside shots to make more three-point plays, Jake naturally accepted that and with only one player in defense, he was much easier to attack.
When the second half ended, Tar Heels team won more easily than anyone expected, Jake played for another 18 minutes in that second half and scored 25 points, 3 assists, 3 rebounds, and 3 steals.
"What an unexpected game we had here at the Dean Smith Center, we all came to see a rematch between two strong teams and favorites to win the NCAA tournament, but what we saw was an easy win for the Tar Heels team."
"At the beginning of the season Duncan was still very underrated and with two Centers playing together the Wake Forest Demon team took advantage of that to win many games early in the season, but later in time everyone understood that only Duncan played so well on that team."
"So either teams put more than one player to score Duncan or let him play just like the Tar Heels team did, so many times the Wake Forest Demon team ended up losing like today."
"What defines how opponents face this Wake Forest Demon team is how much confidence that the team has in attack and Coach Smith had full confidence in Jake Smith and Shammond Williams in the attack."
"And so we saw this game with the Tar Heels team winning easily and Jake having a great game hitting 10 three-point shots in 15 attempts and scoring 42 points at the end of the game."