The game then as nobody expected was for overtime, now there were 5 more minutes for the outcome of the game to be decided, the biggest problem was that the teams were tired after playing for 40 minutes.
Even if neither player played the full 40 minutes they would still be tired the same way, of course even tired they could still keep playing, but both teams could probably make more mistakes.
Jake was an exception to this because he was fine to play another 5 minutes and Vince Carter as well as Shammond Williams also because they took turns in court time, Coach Smith naturally let Jake start playing in overtime.
No one knew if the coach had any idea what was going on in Jake's mind or maybe he didn't even care after all the most important thing now was to win this game against the Duke Blue Devils team.
Many said the advantage was all with Team Tar Heels because Team Duke Blue Devils only got upset because the strategy in them had worked now, however it was different and Team Tar Heels would do their best in those 5 minutes.
Jake was not distracted by his thoughts and played the best he could, as in the whole game Team Tar Heels was clearly stronger than Team Duke Blue Devils in this game, this time they took the opponent seriously and Jake even if tried harder in this game.
So after 5 minutes, Tar Heels ended up winning the game as expected, in that second half with extra time Jake played for 21 minutes, he made 25 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds, and 3 steals.
In the extra 5 minutes, Jake played as he wished and with the most tired opponents, he managed to score 11 points and a few more assists, with 3 shots of 3 points in a few plays in a row.
It seemed that Jake really wanted to ensure the team's victory in those few minutes and almost did the same points of the entire second half in a third of the time, the team Tar Heels won the game by 104 points against 98 points of the opponent.
By that score few would think it was such a close match that it was even for overtime, it showed how Jake struggled to secure the team win, Jake got a double-double with 39 points and 10 assists.
"What a game we could see today, a game that seemed easy for the Tar Heels team eventually went into overtime after a surprising Duke Blue Devils end game and ended in an easy win for the Tar Heels team again."
"If we can summarize the game we could say that the Tar Heels team underestimated their opponent, at the end of the game they almost lost by carelessness and even Jake played an average game in normal time."
"It can't be said like that, Duke Blue Devils' strategy seemed to isolate Jake in the game so he couldn't play his best performance unless he passed the ball to his teammates."
"But it really looks like he was underestimating the Duke Blue Devils team during normal playing time because he scored 11 points and hit three three-point shots without missing any overtime if he did something like that during the game Team Tar Heels I would have no difficulty winning."
"This is the first time I've seen a genius perform amazingly and still get criticized, even though he has an overtime Jake hit 9 three-point shots out of 11 attempts in the game, an average of 82% on 27 points, I can say that went down in history as one of the best performers in the three-point line."
Everyone praised Jake and was surprised by his numbers, yet Jake was less praised than Stephen Curry at the same time at university even though he had better results on the three-point line.
That's because even with these results Jake was not a player who made many attempts at three-point play in a game, usually players who had three-point records averaged 9 attempts per game while Jake has averaged 6 so far.
It was rare to have an overtime game where Jake tried more than 10 shots of three while the best in three-point shots usually tried 15 times or more in the best games, so Jake averaged over 60% while the best had 44% of hit average.
By the end of the year if Jake could win a championship he would surely have more reputation than Stephen Curry had, the difference was that Jake would probably not only be known for just the three points but for getting a lot of points and having high average statistics on the box score as it had now.
After all, more than half of the games of the season were left, if the team could keep advancing in the NCAA tournament they would have only more games, so it was too early to talk about the final stats Jake would have.
After an exciting game like this everyone went back to university tired, luckily the next games would be a sequence of three home games so players would get less tired.
In addition, the team came from a sequence of 7 straight wins in which they were approaching the sequence they had earlier this year before losing to the Wake Forest team, even though they almost lost the last game as it was against a strong rival no one surprised that it was so hard.
Reporters now said that the current Tar Heels team could be one of the best players in history, being recognized as one of the best teams in history would surely be great for everyone.
From what Jake remembered Team Tar Heels after this game against Team Duke that was lost in his past life would have an incredible winning streak by the end of the season because Ed Cota had started playing longer in the games and the team it got better.
This time, however, Jake joined the team much earlier and scored more points than Ed Cota, so the team must have started this winning streak before, but Jake didn't blindly trust that as he knew he had changed that story.
After a few days the Tar Heels team soon returned to play, the game was at the Dean Smith Center and the two teams began to prepare for the game, even though coming from a game in overtime against a rival the Tar Heels team had strong players and had almost completely recovered.
Jake hadn't spoken privately to the coaches and neither of them bothered to explain his decision at the end of the last game to Jake, he didn't care as long as he kept playing, but in his heart, he didn't forget that.
The team they would face today was the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders team, the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders team had a good team this year and even losing several games they had a good season so far.
Even though the opponent was strong, the Tar Heels team was doing very well today and all the players were in good shape, Jake can play for 17 minutes in that first half and scored 16 points, 9 assists, 5 rebounds, and 4 steals.
It was a game in which he realized that his teammates were in great shape and made more assists, because of that the team ended up missing more and he got more rebounds, compared to he scored fewer points than in other games.
In the second half realizing this Jake tried even more assists in his court time, in another 16 minutes he made only 11 points, but in comparison got 11 assists, 5 rebounds, and 3 steals.
It was the first triple-double he had since entering college and Jake was very happy about it, the key to doing so was to slow down his attempts to get more points and try more assists.
After all, for every 10 assists he tried in the game his teammates sometimes missed 2 or 3, and that is because Jake's passes were always accurate, so it was harder for him to have 10 assists than to have more than 30 points.
This was not exactly the problem with rebounds, but many players always wanted to fight rebounds either on their team or the opposing team, so sometimes the luck of having the right position can guarantee more rebounds for one player.
The Tar Heels team won by scoring 111 points against only 42 points from the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders team, this showed how this game was dominated by the Tar Heels team, Carter scored 22 points and Jamison scored 26 points.
So only the three scored more than 70 points, this is considered the strongest attack of all college teams, and this was considered Jake's best game of the season, even better than the game in which he scored 51 points.
With the Tar Heels team continuing their winning streak, everyone on the team was very happy and even Coach Smith was very pleased, he had not told anyone he intended to leave the team after this season.
Nothing would be better for him than his team winning the NCAA tournament in his senior year coaching the team, so he had to admit that it was Jake who was leading the team to perform well.
After this game they would have another 4 days rest until the next game, Jake as always celebrated with his roommates and called his mother to talk.
The next day Jake did his daily training running the 50 km, he himself thought that maybe he could decrease his total time a bit further by increasing his running speed, but it wouldn't make a big difference in the upcoming marathons and Jake was waiting for his trainer to see if he would change his training style.
After running with Zack who had already gotten used to running five miles every day, Jake soon believed that Zack could run a marathon, but he wanted to train him longer and so said nothing.
Not to mention that with his new training method something could change in Zack's training as well if his trainer had a better training method he would surely pass on to his friend Zack.
Jake was not arrogant to think that his current marathon training method was the best, for he who had the system was more appropriate, but for ordinary athletes, it could end up being harmful and less effective than other training.
