Champion, please stay!

Chapter 47. Mad Three Begins with the Massacre

"Your wish to lead your team to the 2007-2008 NCAA Basketball Championship has been fulfilled."

My wish to be fulfilled: To win the NCAA championship before graduating from college.

The Husky team had essentially secured a spot in the top 64 after winning eight or nine matches in the qualifying rounds, but when they actually received the system notification, Yi Shui still felt a little relieved.

If a wish is not fulfilled, the rewards already obtained will be deducted twice in the future. Entering Madness 3 only grants 1 skill and 1 physical attribute point, so the thought of double deduction is a huge loss.

The remaining one... must also be accomplished!

After celebrating with his teammates, Yi Shui went to the desk that had been left unattended and used the mouse to look at the other names on the list of those who had advanced. He didn't want to memorize them all, but rather to look at the names that mattered to him.

Right on the path to the playoffs, they spotted their nemesis – the Villanova Wildcats!

他们这个晋级线路的8支球队，分别是1-16、8-9、4-13、5-12，野猫队排在中部赛区第十二！
Seeing that the Wildcats' first-round opponent was the Clemson Tigers, Yi Shui felt a little disappointed. This Tigers team had Trevor Booker, an All-American player from the Atlantic Coast Conference, whom he thought would be a future NBA first-round pick, as well as as many as four players from the Coast Conference Second Team. Their record was third in the Coast Conference, and the Wildcats might not be able to beat them.

Yi Shui really wanted to play against the Wildcats again. He would be worried if he lost, as Madness 3 was a decisive game, but he couldn't let go of the idea of ​​revenge against the opponent who had defeated them twice.

Then he saw that team again in the Central Division – the Davidson Wildcats! Unfortunately, they were ranked tenth and not on his path to the next round, so he might not be able to meet them.

He glanced at the Wildcats' path to the playoffs. In the second round, they would face the winner between the second-place and fifteenth-place teams, and the second-place team was... Georgetown!

'No wonder Gao Yuanyuan fell out of the top 15 in the first round even without me. That's incredibly unlucky! First she encountered a rose, then a primary school student!'

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, Hibbert will become a stepping stone for Curry's crazy third game.

Looking at the season as a whole, Hibbert dominated in the regional stage, but got hammered all over the national stage... No wonder NBA teams couldn't be optimistic about him!
If it weren't for Bird's good judgment, Hibbert might have fallen to the second round like DeAndre Jordan.

However, living in this era, Yi Shui did know the reason why DeAndre Jordan didn't make it to the first round—his role model was Dwight Howard.

In the last two years, the physical attributes of big men who were modeled after Dwight Howard have all been underwhelming. They all looked like Howard in their school days, but once they entered the NBA, they couldn't even hold down the fort for Kwame Brown.

DeAndre Jordan's association with Dwight Howard, much like other players associated with Larry Bird after Adam Morrison, inevitably led to a sharp drop in his draft position.

If DeAndre Jordan had the brains of Joe Alexander, he could have come up with an outrageous draft comparison for himself and promoted it everywhere, like Mutombo or Russell, or even said he was the next Olajuwon, which might have turned things around. But unfortunately, Jordan didn't.

The Davidson Wildcats' first-round opponent should be the seventh seed in their division. Yi Shui looked up and saw... Kansas State University, the team that Billies plays for, is third in the Big 12 conference. It looks like they're going to get crushed by the little guys.

Yi Shui reviewed all the teams in the Central Division and discovered another team with a player he was interested in—the USC Trojans, where OJ Mayo plays. They were ranked eighth and could potentially be matched up in the second round!
...

The Huskies made history by becoming the seeded team for the NCAA's "divisional era" over thirty years ago, becoming the first non-divisional champion seeded team.

Many media outlets and fans have spoken out in support of the Memphis Tigers, who defeated three top-tier league champions but only finished second in the Southern Division. The Huskies, on the other hand, became a seeded team in the division simply by defeating the Tigers.

However, the reasons these people are defending the Tigers are also the reasons those who support the Huskies being seeded: the Huskies defeated the Tigers head-on, so of course they should be ranked ahead of the Tigers.

Seeing such controversy, Yi Shui didn't take it to heart. They were in the center of the controversy only because they benefited from it. If the judges had chosen the Tigers as the seeded team, the Tigers would inevitably have also been caught in the controversy.

A few days later, on March 15, the Husky team left Connecticut and arrived in Springfield, the capital of Illinois.

The division of the 3rd Madness tournament is not based on the participating teams, but on the host city.

The Eastern Conference is located in the Carolina and Virginia areas; the Western Conference is located in Arizona, California, and Oregon; and the Southern Conference is located in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida...

The first two rounds of the Central Division will be held in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, and Kansas, respectively, in the central and northern United States.

The Huskies, along with the 16th-ranked Portland Vikings, the 8th-ranked USC Trojans, and the 9th-ranked Kent Yellow Flashes, all played their first two games at Springfield University's home stadium, Metropolitan Arena.

After arriving in Springfield, Yi Shui and his two best friends went to Lincoln's Grave to take photos. Since they were already there, they felt they would have to take a picture to make the trip worthwhile.

For this photo shoot, Yad brought his newly bought digital camera. The shooting results... were so poor that they couldn't even touch the surface of the bulky DSLR they had previously complained about. The user experience was quite bad. After returning to the hotel and uploading the photos to their computer, they were dissatisfied with every single one.

However, they didn't regret it for long. That evening, they saw photos of them visiting Lincoln's grave on the news.

The photos in the news were much better than theirs, and almost all of them were group photos, unlike the ones they took themselves. Only two of them were group photos taken by passersby.

Based on the camera movement and timing of those photos, Yi Shui had reason to suspect that the photographer was French.

His normal conversation and banter with Robinson and Yad at the tourist attraction were somehow captured in the photos, giving off an air of arrogance and unruliness.

Especially him, he's already handsome, but he looks even more handsome in these photos. Of course, these photos and this news aren't praising them, but rather attacking them for being too complacent, not training properly in the tournament city and instead going on vacation, predicting they'll be a seeded team eliminated in the first round.

Despite the media's lack of goodwill, Yi Shui appreciated the photos themselves.

As for the media attacks... their team didn't arrive at their hotel in Springfield until after 3 p.m., and their trio of yellow, white, and black players arrived at Lincoln's Grave at 4:30 p.m. Their military-style tour took them at most 20 minutes to walk around, and with dinner, they were back at the hotel before it got dark. And yet they still got attacked for that.

With fame comes controversy, and the Husky team, currently in the spotlight, is bound to encounter such situations.

It wasn't just them; when Yi Shui was browsing the news, he saw that other popular players also had some negative news.

Some are similar to them, they are simply being unfairly targeted. In this internet age, as long as there is even a little bit of truth in the news, there will be a group of people who believe it.

Some news stories look so fake, so obviously fabricated that it seems impossible for a normal person to make them up...

In Columbia, Missouri, Kansas State's star player Michael Beasley, out of jealousy, urinated into his teammate's new Air Jordans that he had bought for the Madness 3. When the teammate put them on, he realized something was wrong and then saw Beasley laughing next to him, and the two got into a fight.

The trio of Huang, Bai, and Hei were stunned by the news.

Yad: "Brook, Stanley, do you think this is true?"

Robinson: "Knowing Nig as I do, this is so outrageous, it's probably true."

Yi Shui: "Stanley, only you would dare to say something like that... I suddenly feel that Jerome isn't so bad after all. He just wants to compete with me for the position of the core scorer, he's just going against me, but it's not that outrageous."

Yad: "I suddenly think Jerome is a pretty good guy too. You put him on the bench, and he's only competing with you in training and games to see who's better. He's annoying when he talks, but we don't seem to be that nice to hear either."

Robinson: “…”

These days, the trend is not to compare who is better, but who is less bad?

...

The 2007-2008 NCAA National Basketball Championship began on March 16th.

The Husky team's first match is on the second day of competition. Today, they spent the day preparing for the match at the training ground arranged by Springfield University.

That evening, Yi Shui and several teammates and coaches went to the Metropolitan Arena to watch the match between the Trojans and the Yellow Flashes.

Before the match, Adam introduced some information about the two sides to Yi Shui.

USC joined the NCAA at its inception and is known as the Trojan Army. It is a renowned team in the NCAA, with strong histories in men's and women's football and women's basketball. The men's football team, in particular, is famous throughout the United States and even has a certain degree of fame worldwide. However, the men's basketball team has never won a championship in 70 years and has only made it to the final four twice, earning it the title of 'the shame of the Trojans'.

However, because the school is located in Los Angeles and the campus is in the city center, it has never lacked talented high school students to join, and its popularity has always been high. Last summer, the addition of OJ Mayo, the number one high school student in the United States, made the Trojans, a team that had not made it to the Third Madness for four consecutive years, rise again. They achieved a record of 11 wins and 7 losses in the conference stage, ranking fifth in the PAC-10 conference, and achieved a record of 9 wins and 4 losses in the qualifying stage, and were ranked eighth in the Central Conference by the judges.

The University of Kent Yellow Flashes, champions of the Central American Basketball Association (CBA) minor league, have made it to the Third Madness for the first time in their 58-year history, according to available information. Their strength is unknown.

After the game started, the Yellow Flash team took the initiative and led the Trojans 48-40 at halftime!
Mayo exploded in the second half, shooting 7-for-11 in 18 minutes, including 4-for-8 from three-point range, scoring 18 points without any free throws, leading the Trojans to a 47-39 lead in the second half and forcing the game into overtime.

加时赛中梅奥继续爆发，5投2中拿到5分，率队打出了7比3的比分。

最终，特洛伊人队在打了39分钟23投12中拿到31分的梅奥的带领下，以94比90逆转黄色闪光队，晋级第二轮。

"Brook, Mayo is pretty good. How does he compare to you?" Clark asked this question in a relaxed tone, as if he already had an answer.

Yi Shui replied, "He's very good. No wonder people in Los Angeles dare to call him 'Super Jordan.' But Lyon, you're right. The opponents in the third season are indeed completely different from before. Even a random team that appears out of nowhere is so strong. They've managed to push Mayo to this point. We need to be careful in our next game."

"what?"

Clark looked at the rankings on the big screen. The Yellow Flash team was 9th in the division! They were only one place behind the Trojans. Shouldn't they be evenly matched?

The following evening, at the same venue, the Husky team faced off against the Portland State Vikings, who finished last in their division and sixteenth in the standings, in their first-round match.

After halftime, Clark, one of the onlookers, felt a little guilty. He had only mentioned it to Yi Shui out of caution, but he didn't expect the kid to remember it so clearly.

The opposing team is in a terrible state! The Vikings are in their 10th year, and after finally securing the top spot in the Big Sky League and a 6-7 record in the qualifying rounds to squeeze into Madness 3, they've run into such a serious pair of Huskies and Twin Towers!
易水打了17分钟，拿到9分5板5盖帽、塔比特4分6板5盖帽，两人携手摁死了维京人队的进攻，率领哈士奇队以43比11结束上半场！
Jeremiah Domingos, the Vikings' only star player, a rising star this season, and only 168 cm tall, was almost brought to tears by the two players' blocks!
With a final score of 85-33, the Huskies swept the River Valley Devils by 52 points, surpassing the UCLA Bruins' 41-point victory over the River Valley Devils yesterday, kicking off their third-year madness!

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(End of this chapter)