Chapter 423 1998 NCAA Tournament 5

The other day after they were more rested and relaxed, Coach Guthridge prepared the interview for the players, the hotel allowed them to use a special place in the hotel prepared for the press and the reporters went there.

The deal was with four sports media that accepted Coach Guthridge's conditions, which had many questions forbidden, reporters from ESPN, TNT, CBS and Sports Illustrated were allowed.

Many questions were forbidden such as talking about whether players would go to the NBA draft or continue playing at the university, Coach Guthridge thought that this could be misused by the media to disrupt the relationship between players and fans.

So the reporters would stay in the hotel's press room and the players would enter individually and so the reporters could ask several questions to the players individually, all the players would go and the reporters would ask the questions if they wanted to.

Coach Guthridge would naturally also answer the reporters' questions, for security reasons he would answer the questions first and then be the players on the starting team with Jake being the fifth player to speak.

So if reporters asked something that was not allowed he would be expelled and the interview would continue, so after everything was organized the reporters first interviewed Coach Guthridge who was also very important in this interview.

After all, it was Bill Guthridge's first year as head coach and Team Tar Heels have already had one of the best seasons in team history and won the ACC tournament and was close to winning the NCAA tournament.

In addition, along with trainer Dean Smith, he led the team to break that San Francisco team record and Team Tar Heels now had 61 straight wins, so naturally, he would have a lot of questions for Coach Guthridge.

The first question was how he felt when he learned that he would have to replace the legendary coach Dean Smith with whom he worked for over 30 years, and how he felt having one of the best debut seasons of any college basketball coach.

"Coach Dean Smith has been the head coach of the Tar Heels team for 36 years, he was the best coach the Tar Heels team has had in my opinion and has led many teams to make great seasons and is respected by everyone."

"A lot of what I know as a coach I learned from him and this team that managed to break that record was formed by him and started winning games with him, I only coached this team after Serge Zwikker left."

"I am very happy with my work so far as the head coach of the Tar Heels team, much of the credit for this excellent season is the incredible players who are on the team now, I see 7 players who can be starting players on any team."

"Jake, Antawn, Vince, Ademola, Makhtar, Shammond, and Ed are incredible players, Jake and Antawn are competing for the best player of the season award, it proves that we have an incredible team."

"If the Tar Heels team wins the NCAA tournament this season I believe it will be their merit, that of coach Dean Smith and the greatest glory of my career."

Coach Guthridge was experienced in talking to the media, he said what he really thought and was careful not to say anything that could be misinterpreted, the reporters asked a few more questions and the last question was the most interesting of the interview, as the coach Guthridge thought it would be the professional future of the Tar Heels team players.

"This is difficult to say, a player's professional career depends a lot on luck and opportunities beyond skills, many excellent players and NBA stars have never won an MVP award and never won an NBA title."

"I think a lot of players on the Tar Heels team today have the capacity to be professional players in the NBA or another basketball league, Shammond Williams who finishes college this season has a good chance of going to the NBA."

"With his ability if he can play on a team that is strong and with players from other positions very skilled he has a chance to win many awards and win the NBA title one day perhaps."

"Antawn Jamison also has the ability to play in the NBA in the future, he is a very skilled player who has a lot of ability to score a lot and get rebounds, so if he plays on a strong team with good players he can be very successful."

"It is the same with Jake Smith and Vince Carter, they are excellent players, but if they did not have a good team with good players in the other positions it is impossible for them to win prizes and win the NBA title."

"What I can say is that everyone has the ability to play on a strong team to win an NBA title, everyone has the ability and will depend on luck to achieve that."

Coach Guthridge said a standard answer to that question and in addition to praising the players, he did not highlight any players as the best of them, he really felt that everyone had the ability to play on a strong team to win the NBA title.

After that, the other players were interviewed and only Coach Guthridge was present at the other interviews to make sure that the reporters would not ask questions that could harm the players and the team.

One question everyone received besides Coach Guthridge was about what players thought of Jake Smith, everyone said as expected by reporters who thought Jake was the best team player and team leader on the court and one of the main responsible for the current great team season.

It was as if everyone said that Jake was the best player on the team just as everyone knew it without anyone saying, after all, Jake had broken several records in several different areas, he had the record for points, assists, and steals in a single season.

The next interview would be with Jake, all the reporters were waiting for this and had already prepared the questions they would ask Jake, after all, Jake gave few interviews which made his answers even more valuable.

Naturally, the reporters were smart and would not ask any questions that might compromise Jake to not risk being expelled from the press conference, the first question for Jake was what he felt about having the opportunity to win his second NCAA tournament in his second season.

"I am very happy with this, it is an honor and a dream for any basketball player to win an NCAA tournament, I was lucky to win in my freshman season and I was also lucky to be able to win two ACC tournaments."

"Winning a second NCAA tournament would definitely be a great honor and a great achievement that I will be proud of forever, I hope our team wins the next games to achieve this."

Jake answered that question carefully so as not to accidentally say that this was his last season at university, so if he won this second NCAA tournament it would be the last he would win.

The reporters couldn't guess that and soon prepared the next question, they asked if Jake felt that he was the most important player on the Tar Heels team in these two seasons and to break that record because of the data that in games that when he played for more 20 minutes the Tar Heels team always won.

"I believe so, just as the numbers said I scored more points and more assists so in my team I was the most important in these 61 victories, but as I said this is just seeing the numbers and this team."

"Without my teammates, I wouldn't be able to get those numbers, without the training of Coach Dean Smith last season and Coach Bill Guthridge this season the team wouldn't win and I couldn't do that well."

"So I believe the team was responsible for this and not just me, just as Coach Guthridge said without a good team with players in the right positions we couldn't win the games, let alone the NCAA tournament."

Jake and the players had talked several times and Jake was friends with everyone, just as everyone said he was the best player on the team he could also say that without causing any problems with the other players because the numbers say so.

But it was the first time that Jake said it clearly to the media because he gave few interviews, and Jake only said it because there were only 3 games left in the NCAA tournament, so it wouldn't cause any problems for the team.

After that, the reporters asked Jake some more questions about basketball and were careful not to ask any more compromising questions, and finally asked Jake if he thought he would miss another game because of some marathon he had to participate in.

"No, I don't think this will happen anymore, the Tokyo marathon is a very special marathon for me and I always wanted to participate in this marathon, when I became a marathon runner I always thought about participating in 6 marathons in the world."

"And these were the Boston, New York, Chicago, London, Berlin, and Tokyo marathon, these are for me the most important and main marathons in the world, the other marathons I had the opportunity to participate in."

"But to race in Tokyo I had to lose an important game for my team, I just did it because I believed in my team and because it was my dream to race once in Tokyo, so I think it will be difficult for that to happen again."

This could be a tricky question for Jake, but in fact, Jake always wanted to talk about it because he knew that it worried a lot of sponsors and fans that he might miss an important game to run a marathon.

So Jake was happy to answer that question, even though he had problems with the other big marathons in the future because he talked about the major marathons that were not yet called that, he had gained more support from those marathons.