In the next few days, Jake returned to training routine normally, in the morning he had daily running training with Zack and later he did training with the basketball team.
After two days he knew he would not be starting again the next day's game, he was a little disappointed by that, but he understood that this was Coach Smith's decision, Coach Guthridge tried very hard to convince Coach Smith to allow Jake played and failed.
Jake wanted to secure a place in the team using his own skills and he was sure that in a short time he could end up convincing Coach Smith if he went to another university that the team was not so strong Jake would never have this problem, but he wanted just one university with a strong team to win many Tournament.
The other day Jake didn't do his daily training running as usual and just woke up at the normal time to attend classes because he had to be rested to play the game in a few hours.
Jake spent time with his friends after school and then had to go to the Dean Smith Center to prepare for the game, after some time the whole team had done the warm-up exercises and was ready for the game.
After the last game, Jake was much more in tune with the whole team, Vince Carter mostly helped Jake get a lot closer to his other teammates, especially Antawn Jamison who was a close friend of Carter got closer to Jake.
This made Jake very happy even with the defeat and still remaining in reserve, Coach Smith and Coach Guthridge passed some tactics and positioning to the players before the game.
Before the last game as the team, in debut was Coach Smith only worked on the confidence of the players, but after the defeat Coach Smith passed on in detail what mistakes they made in the last game so they could learn and not make the same mistakes in Upcoming games.
After a few minutes, the opposing team arrived and they began to prepare to start the game, the opposing team in this game would be Richmond Spiders, they had a weaker team this year and so it would not be a big challenge for the Tar Heels team.
But as they had missed the debut game this eventually put pressure on the players, Coach Smith did not want to calm the players down and put more pressure on them to win the game.
Jake was pretty calm about it all, Coach Smith had praised his performance in his debut game while criticizing all the other players, and as he would start in reserve Jake didn't feel the same pressure from the other players.
Especially when he remembered that the Tar Heels team had won this game in his past life if he could play longer and the team won as he remembered it would be the best result for Jake.
After a few minutes, the game started in the early minutes of the game the Tar Heels team that had much more skilled players began to dominate the game when the team led by 4 points for a few minutes everyone started to calm down and played even better.
Everyone was fine in this game and just 6 minutes into the first half that Coach Smith decided to put Jake into the game, Jake replaced Shammond Williams who was playing well in that game.
In 3 minutes playing in the first half, Jake managed to make 5 points, 2 assists, and 1 rebound and was soon replaced by Ed Cota, it seemed that Coach Smith wanted to put several players to play a few minutes and gain experience with a weaker opponent as was the Richmond Spiders team.
At the beginning of the second half, Okulaja eventually started on the bench and Shammond Williams was more advanced in his position, Ed Cota continued playing for another 2 minutes and Jake joined the game again.
This time Jake played 11 more minutes and made 8 points, 4 assists 3 rebounds and 2 steals, he managed to make fewer points but helped the overall team more, Shammond Williams came in his place and played the last 7 minutes of the second half.
Team Tar Heels dominated the entire game and won with a score of 90 points against 71 of team Richmond Spiders, Vince Carter was the best in the game and scored 25 points and got 6 rebounds, after the game everyone returned to their dorms and Jake counted To your friends the good news.
His friends were very happy for him after Jake called his mother who was very happy to know that Jake's team had won, but was angry again to know that Jake played a few minutes in the game, Jake thought differently.
He knew that in his past life Coach Smith and even Coach Guthridge had a difficult time casting the team with Ed Cota playing so well, so Shammond Williams had to play a few minutes in Vince Carter's position and a few minutes in Ed Cota's position.
And Shammond Williams has always been a big player in Jake's memories, so this time the coaches still had more Jake to make that decision even harder to make in a short time.
Even so, Jake could play longer in this game and played even better, while Ed Cota played a lot less time than Jake and less than in the last game, which showed that Coach Smith was deciding to use Jake as the team's sixth player.
Jake felt bad for Ed Cota, but he wanted this place in the starting lineup to help his future as a basketball player, if he ended up in reserve and didn't have much time to play, he would have to try to transfer to another university with a more weak team to have more playing time.
In the following days, Jake continued his training routine until the day of the third game of the season arrived, the game would be again at the Dean Smith Center, playing at home was always better for the Tar Heels team.
Jake felt the difference from high school having to play several days a week, he could see that those who played the longest or had the worst fitness were a little tired before the third game.
Before that, Jake found it strange how the most skilled players who made a big difference in the outcome of a game like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James were replaced in games several times.
For him, a 48-minute game with a break of several minutes was not so tiring for several of these players sometimes having to rest for 13 minutes, but going through it personally he understood why this was happening.
In addition to playing the 48 minutes with a lot of pressure for the result of a high-intensity game with peers, players often had to play several times a week and sometimes had to travel long distances between these games.
It was even worse when some games came in at halftime, so even the best-fit players would have to rest at least 7 minutes to avoid the risk of muscle strain injuries.
Good thing the university game season was only for 6 months, otherwise many players could end up hurting themselves with so many games, players like Vince Carter who played for over 20 years at both the university and the NBA were even more amazing.
The day before, Jake knew he would not play as a starting man, so when he heard that he was a little disappointed, but he still understood Coach Smith's position, he remembered that even playing so well Ed Cota often started reserve games in his first year even though it played almost 30 minutes every game.
After a few hours, both teams were ready for the game to begin, this third game was with the Pitt Panthers team, the Pitt Panthers team was not a particularly strong team this season either.
They got a better campaign by trusting Vonteego Cummings and Mark Blount who played in the NBA and were very good players, Jake also remembered that the Tar Heels team easily won in their past life.
Again Jake started the game on the bench, Shammond Williams started as a starter and could feel the pressure of competition with Ed Cota and Jake for his position, if he could not play as SG he would have less and fewer minutes to play.
In the first 7 minutes he played well and scored 6 points but was still replaced by Ed Cota, Ed Cota different from Shammond Williams thought more about the collective game and made only 2 points and made 3 assists in the 5 minutes he played.
Jake took the place of Ed Cota and was playing for 8 minutes until the end of the first half, Shammond Williams still played another 5 minutes in place of Vince Carter in that first half, Jake had a great performance.
Jake made 7 points, 3 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals, he played thinking of the team and also made his points, could you say he had the best of his competitors for PG's position in the team.
Ed Cota started the second half and played for 3 minutes before being replaced, Shammond Williams played for 8 minutes before being replaced and Jake can play for another 9 minutes in that second half.
Jake had 12 points, 3 assists, 3 rebounds and 2 steals playing in those 9 minutes in the second half of the game, this time Antawn Jamison was the best player in the team scoring 26 points and getting 5 rebounds.
But everyone could say that actually the best player on the team was Jake who played just over half the time Jamison played and did a lot more for the team in general after that game everyone had accepted Jake on the team and knew he was really talented as they.
With Jake playing basketball so well and still winning several marathons and breaking records, no one else on the team could say he was jealous of him being the only sponsored player on the team.
Clearly Jake was a better athlete than them, some might still think they were better at basketball, but Jake did a lot more than all of them overall, Jake still had great grades in school and everyone knew he was smart.
So it could be said that Jake was greatly easing the situation for the university and the basketball organization that allowed Jake to be an exception and receive sponsorship, he did everything so well that if used as a reference no one else could get sponsorship.
