Champion, please stay!

Chapter 12. He's still in the starting lineup? Was he taking a bullet for Calhoun?
Around 1 p.m., Yi Shui returned to the training ground, where many people were already there. When everyone arrived, there were 10 more people than in the morning, because the second team had also come.

The second team's head coach is Kevin Ollie, the scouting director. Most of the players were selected last week, and the players eliminated from the first team selection today will directly enter the second team.

Yi Shui had heard from Yad that after Calhoun was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005, he signed a six-year, $48 million contract ahead of schedule, and it was decided at that time that he would retire when he turned 70 in 2012.

Ollie, the head of scouting, was Calhoun's handpicked successor.

When a scout becomes the head coach, Yi Shui initially felt something was off, as he had previously thought that lead assistant coach Jerry Cook was the future head coach.

But upon closer reflection, a college team head coach's eye for selecting high school players might be more important than his coaching ability.

A good eye is a very mysterious thing; for most people, it's either there or it isn't. As for coaching, the upper limit depends heavily on talent, but the lower limit can be trained.

Jerry Cook seems to be equivalent to an assistant head coach, doing everything, but I haven't heard of any particular outstanding aspect of this assistant coach.

Yi Shui recalled what Clark had said: Ollie had taken the initiative to approach Harden when he was in 10th grade.

During a casual conversation with Johnson Bird, he learned that Harden was a big guy who was less than 6 feet tall and weighed over 210 pounds in 10th grade and could only shoot from the corner. It was only after Harden grew more than ten centimeters in height during the summer of 10th grade that he took off in 11th grade and defeated Demar DeRozan to become the strongest high school player in California.

As a member of the "Husky Golden Decade Coaching Team," Ollie's eye for talent is indeed sharp.

Although Yi Shui didn't know much about NCAA basketball in his "previous life," he had seen a news report that the University of Connecticut Huskies would be named the "greatest team of the 21st century."

From 2000 to 2024, the Huskies won 5 championships, completely dominating college powerhouses such as North Carolina, Duke, UCLA Bruins, Florida Alligators, Kansas and Kentucky Wildcats.

From 00 to the present, the Husky team has only won one championship, in 04... Yi Shui's evaluation of Ollie has risen sharply.

Although it will be several years before Ollie takes over, it won't have much to do with him. The "crown prince" doesn't have much influence in the team right now, but the more prestigious his alma mater becomes in the future, the more face he will have.

At 2 p.m., Calhoun arrived at the training ground and, without further ado, announced the selection results.

Just as Yi Shui had predicted, all 10 of them passed the selection.

The last lucky winner was Jonathan Mandeldorf from Germany.

On the first day of the gathering on the 25th of last month, Yi Shui was deeply impressed by this senior red-haired white center. The 211 cm tall man had a three-point shooting ability and could also play two low-post back-to-the-basket moves, a turnaround hook shot and a turnaround fadeaway shot. He had heard that he had experience training in the German second division youth training team.

But in yesterday's and today's practice matches, all we saw were problems—too slow, physically imposing but with a soft playing style, and rim protection worse than a standee, at least a standee won't dodge...

Mandeldorf was just like the stereotypical German; he didn't show much emotion after passing the selection process and calmly hugged the students who came forward to congratulate him.

The two who were eliminated in the finals had very different reactions. The Brazilian senior student named Terry was still cheerful, saying, "If I go to the second team, I can still be the top scorer, and maybe our record will be better than your first team."

The senior point guard was crying his eyes out; this was his last chance to make the first team roster, and he would never have another opportunity.

...

After observing the various scenes of life for a while, Yi Shui felt a bit emotional.

After a few seconds of reflection, he opened the system. He had 'sense' that a notification had arrived after Calhoun had read his name.

"You have successfully passed the selection to return to the school team. The coaching staff attaches great importance to you. This is an important foundation for you to realize your dream of becoming a college champion. Congratulations on receiving the reward: 1 random matching technique training method."

Because of your poor rebounding performance in the final selection tournament, the matching skill training method has been designated as rebounding-related.

Taking into account your physique, athletic ability... Congratulations on winning the reward: Rajon Rondo's cone-driving rebounding technique training method (training cards can be used to improve efficiency).

"..."

Yi Shui looked at the screen, opened her mouth, but held back the curses, after all, there were so many people around.

'No, what's wrong with my rebounding?'

After the morning practice match, Yi Shui looked at the stat sheet with Calhoun. He remembered that he had grabbed 5 rebounds yesterday and 7 today, which was a lot for a guard... 'Wait a minute, this system with its poor eyesight, could it be using the center standard?'

However, seeing that he, as a 'center', was matched with Coach Rondo's training methods is strangely amusing.

After grumbling to himself, he habitually switched to self-comfort mode.

At least there's a reward, right? Whoever gets the rebounds wins the game, so it's at least somewhat practical.

Furthermore, the two training matches yesterday and today combined earned me 1 hour of shooting practice cards, 1 hour of ball handling practice cards, and 2 hours of rebounding practice cards.

The rebounding training card will come in handy.

However, after watching the "training video" of "Coach Long's rebounding around cones", it seemed that it couldn't be practiced alone. As a guard, it seemed a bit abrupt for him to go to the trainer and ask to practice rebounding.

Let's leave it at that for now. Things will work themselves out. We'll see later.

Yi Shui took a close look at his teammates for the new season.

Point guards: AJ Price, Ben Spencer, Doc Wiggins.

Shooting Guards: Jerome Dyson, Nick Frostowski, Johnny Leonard. Small Forwards: Stanley Robinson, Johnson Bird, Craig Ostry.

Power Forwards: Jeff Yad, Jarvan Edwards, Chris DeKay.

Centers: Hasheem Thabeet, Ossade Omocaro, Jonathan Mandeldorf.

The positions are not fixed. Apart from Thabeet and Mandeldorf, everyone else has played at least two positions in training matches.

Perhaps because they are his 'close teammates', he felt that his teammates were weak in every way during the first three weeks, but now he can see the strengths of each teammate.

After the players calmed down, Jerry Cook and Clark began training the 28 players from both teams.

Looking at the six training fields packed with people, Yi Shui thought back to the first day of the assembly... More than half a month has passed, and it seems like a lot has changed, yet nothing has changed at all.

At 5 p.m., the Husky team's first official training session of the new season ended, and Calhoun announced the upcoming schedule.

The second team has no warm-up games; they will go directly to New York next Saturday to participate in the NYU Apple Cup, a tournament featuring mostly second teams from Division I universities in New York State, or main teams from community colleges and non-Division I universities.

Team One will have to wait until the week after next, on the 21st, to start their first warm-up match. Yi Shui doesn't care much about the schedule. Universities usually have a maximum of two matches a week. When the matches come, they'll just play.

But their opponents... went to North Carolina to play two games in a row, the first of which was North Carolina State University.

Yi Shui initially thought they were going to play against Clark and Jordan's alma mater, but Yad told him that the opponent was not the Asphalt Heel, but the Wolves. The Wolves had won two championships and reached the final four multiple times, but they were no match for the Asphalt Heel. Moreover, the Wolves had been weak in recent years and had not made it to the Third Madness for several years. They were just a practice match for them.

The second opponent was so obscure that Yad had never even heard of them, but Yi Shui did know them—the Davidson College Wildcats.

This university isn't a member of the top six conferences, and it might not even make the Third Madness once every eight or ten years. However, this team produced a superstar who will define an era in the future, and that guy happens to be still in college...

...

The three-week-long fall tryouts for the college team have concluded, and on September 10th, the first day of the new week, Cornell's intranet announced the new roster for the Husky team.

Basketball fans on campus have been very anxious for the past year or so. They were even more upset to hear that the school didn't recruit a single player from the top 100 high schools in the country this summer.

But when they saw Yi Shui's photo reappear on the school team roster, they were furious, and the school forum was filled with angry comments.

When Yi Shui found out about this, he wanted to curse, but he couldn't curse the fans. What he wanted to curse was his past self, who had dug pits for him everywhere.

However, he had another thought that he suppressed: he really wanted to open his real name and say, "Not only have I made it back to the school team, but I'm also very likely to be a starter. Wouldn't that make you even angrier?"

He tried to clear his mind and focus on training, because he couldn't afford to lose face when facing that opponent.

After the school team selection, the new season has already begun. The training has been adjusted, with team training on Thursday and Friday afternoons, and high-intensity basic skills training on the weekend of the 15th and 16th.

However, the team's first full-load, high-intensity training session drove the head coach crazy.

On Sunday morning, Clark watched as Yi Shui, who had gone to the gym for nearly two hours to work out after the team's intense training session the day before, and had to be carried to the parking lot by Yad, was now practicing his shooting with great energy.

He was about to remark that this kid's talent was even greater than he had imagined when they first met three years ago, when he overheard Calhoun muttering to himself beside him:
"A year and a half! That damn bastard actually wasted a year and a half... no! Two and a half years! It seems he didn't work hard in his freshman year!"

Clark could almost see the dark aura emanating from his boss's head. He thought he needed to have a talk with Yi Shui. If he wanted to increase his strength training, he should go back to Stanford. Weren't the gyms there much better than this old, run-down place? If things continued like this, his boss was going to turn evil.

On Thursday afternoon, September 20th, Yi Shui drove Robinson and Yad to the airport to meet up with the team.

At the 'remote' Stamford campus, it takes about 40 minutes to drive to the Cornell gymnasium for training, and they all envy their teammates who study on the main campus.

But when it comes to playing away games, their teammates are the ones who envy them. The airline partnered with Cornell University arranges the most flights, which are at New Haven International Airport, a suburb of Stamford, just a ten-minute drive from the Stamford campus.

In the evening, the Huskies flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, rested at a hotel for the night, and arrived at the Wolfpack's home stadium, Red Cell Arena, the next morning.

The players saw cameras while preparing for the match!
Bao Yade went to get a set of footage and came back excitedly shouting, "Brothers, the game this afternoon will be broadcast live! CPTV will be broadcasting it live!"

Normally, playing a warm-up game against the Wolves, a perennial bottom-three team in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Husky players weren't particularly enthusiastic. Although they were also near the bottom of their league last season, they were first in the Big East the season before, so their confidence seemed inexplicable.

But when they heard there was a live stream, everyone got excited! Including Yi Shui, who initially only looked forward to fighting that one person!

CPTV, short for Connecticut Public Television, is the local television station with the highest market share, boasting over 200 million subscribers. Even last season, Husky team games averaged over 50 paid viewers, with ratings consistently exceeding 30%!

At 2:30 p.m., after warming up, Yi Shui changed into his No. 13 jersey and put on his training clothes. Last week, he received his jersey for the first time. When he saw the number, he immediately wanted to apply to change it. Before, he would only think of B.

But after thinking about it, I decided against it, since it had already become a part of him.

A few minutes later, Yi Shui and his teammates entered the court at Red Cell Gymnasium. The atmosphere of campus basketball in North Carolina is no less than that in Connecticut. For this warm-up game, all 8000 seats were packed... which made him even more excited for the upcoming live broadcast game.

But viewers in Connecticut, watching the visiting team emerge from the tunnel and seeing the starting lineup posted next to them, weren't so happy.

The local commentators even started criticizing them!
"Are you kidding me? Giving that Chinese kid a chance? I have reason to suspect that when Calhoun was shot in China, Yi took the bullet for him!"

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(End of this chapter)