53 pages • 1 hour read
John FeinsteinLast Shot
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “Next Stop, Bay St. Louis”
While maintaining a tight hold on Stevie’s arm, Ventura leads him to an empty, dark hallway. If Stevie screams, Ventura will have him arrested for breaking into his hotel room. He wants to know why Stevie and Susan Carol were in his room. Stevie bends the truth and tells him who they are but says they weren’t in his room. They were gone for so long because they were watching Vitale on TV and tried to get to the Minnesota State floor. Ventura grows calmer. He admits nothing was missing, but some things were out of place. Stevie says it was probably the maids. Ventura, sensing Stevie is being honest, lets him go.
Stevie calls Chip to tell him about the plan to go to Wojenski’s house. He then tells Susan Carol about his run-in with Ventura and helps her write her story. Tomorrow, they’ll lie to their dads again and tell them they’re attending a Fellowship of Christian Athletes event for their articles. In the morning, Susan Carol drinks coffee with milk and sugar and offers Stevie a sip. Stevie realizes he likes coffee that way.
The young reporters meet Chip at his hotel, and he calls Bobby Mo, who works for Brickley Shoes—one of the many shoe companies competing to sign Chip. Bobby Mo arrives in a green Jeep, which he leaves with Chip, and then takes a taxi downtown. As Chip drives the Jeep to Wojenski’s house, he, Stevie, and Susan Carol discuss how high he’ll go in the NBA Draft. He’ll likely be a top-five pick.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Dean Wojenski”
Thanks to MapQuest, Chip, Stevie, and Susan Carol make it to Wojenski’s house in less than an hour. On his porch, they discuss the transcript dilemma. Wojenski doesn’t have a record of Chip’s transcript, and he doesn’t think his word will be of much use because he’s a “retired old man” (210).
The four then speculate on who changed Chip’s grades. There are plenty of possibilities, so Wojenski is worried. Gambling occurs across the states, so fixing a game is a federal crime that involves the FBI. Wojenski then asks how they found him, and Susan Carol tells him Braman from the Davidson alumni office gave them his information.
Wojenski recalls that when the basketball head coach left Davidson, Chip’s dad got the job, even though he was the number-two assistant. According to Wojenski, the number-one assistant, Steve Jurgensen, was upset. He left coaching and made tons of money as a lawyer. A big contributor to his alma mater, Duke, he’s on the executive committee and could become chairman of the board. Braman is Jurgensen’s wife. Perhaps Jurgensen is fixing the game to get revenge.
On their way back to New Orleans, a car follows Chip and the two reporters. Susan Carol calls a friend whose dad works for the police. The friend checks the license plate number: The car belongs to Jurgensen.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Finding Proof”
At the Superdome, security guards give Chip trouble for parking without a pass. Once they figure out Chip is Chip Graber, the star basketball player, they let him through. Now, Jurgensen can’t follow them anymore.
There’s more trouble with security. They won’t let Stevie and Susan Carol accompany Chip to his press conference because they lack the proper credentials. Refusing to abandon the teen reporters, Chip yells at an NCAA representative until he lets all three of them pass. The representative tells Chip the NCAA might penalize Minnesota State because he’s late.
Reconnecting with Brill, Stevie learns about the ways that the president of a college impacts its economics and its athletics. Duke is searching for a new president, and Brill is going to interview the person in charge of the search, Stuart M. Feeley—a software billionaire and Duke’s board chairman. Brill agrees to let Stevie and Susan Carol come along.
A huge man, Gary, opens the door to Feeley’s hotel room. Feeley watches golf on a gigantic TV and smokes a cigar. Brill and Feeley discuss why Duke’s current president is leaving, and then Susan Carol asks to speak to Feeley alone. Brill asks what’s going on, and Stevie tells them the private conversation concerns sports and religion.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Closing In”
When Susan Carol finishes speaking to Feeley, she tells Stevie what happened. At first, Feeley didn’t believe her. She offered to call Chip to confirm, which convinced him she was telling the truth. Feeley intends to confront Jurgensen alone. If Jurgensen drops the plot and removes himself from the board of trustees, Feeley won’t involve the FBI.
Not wanting to separate, Stevie, Susan Carol, and their dads have dinner together at a chain steak restaurant. They have a lot on their minds, so they’re not saying much. When Stevie goes to sleep that night, he dreams about Jurgensen following them in his car.
The next morning, Stevie reads the paper and discovers the NCAA is fining Minnesota State because Chip was seven minutes late for the press conference. Nervous about the interaction between Feeley and Jurgensen, Stevie keeps looking at his watch. His dad tries to calm him down before visiting a museum about D-Day.
Alone, Stevie watches Vitale on ESPN and waits for news about Feeley and Jurgensen. Chip finally calls and says Jurgensen and Whiting told Feeley that if he calls the FBI, they will “go straight to the NCAA with [Chip’s] transcripts (204). Protocols mean the NCAA will suspend Chip while it investigates, and he will be knocked out of the championship game.
Disappointed and overwhelmed, Stevie and Susan Carol are unsure what to do. Chip, however, has a plan. He’s going to confront Jurgensen in person and tell him that he’ll play as hard as he can, regardless of the status of the transcripts: “I’m gonna call his bluff. Because if he does release the transcript and I’m suspended, the game goes off the board and no one can make a bet on it” (209). The fraught meeting will take place at a hotel away from the Superdome.
As a precaution, Susan Carol emails Kelleher, the USBWA president. She tells him what’s happening and where they’ll be. Chip jokingly adds that if he’s not at the Superdome by seven for the championship, his dad will call the FBI, the CIA, and the New Orleans Police Department. To disguise himself, Chip wears glasses and a hat. They knock on the hotel room door, and surprisingly, Wojenski greets them.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
Feinstein uses atmosphere and dialogue for the frightening encounter between Stevie and Ventura, setting it in an isolated part of the Superdome near a “dark hallway” (187). Ventura threatens Stevie, “If you try to yell, I will have you arrested for breaking into my room this morning” (187). Ventura’s behavior ties to the theme of morals and ethics. Stevie and Susan Carol lied to him, but he is bullying and threatening a 13-year-old boy. Stevie displays the qualities of a quick-thinking reporter because he gets out of the situation through a mix of truths and lies and the contradictions that are sometimes inherent in investigative work: He lies to protect his and Susan Carol’s quest for the truth, choosing to be dishonest for what he perceives as the greater good of the integrity of the tournament and the Graber family. He admits that Susan Carol isn’t his sister, but he lies and maintains that they didn’t go in his room. The deception continues when Susan Carol and Stevie tell their dads that they’re going to an event for Christian athletes when they’re really driving to Mississippi to meet with Wojenski.
Chip drives them to Wojenski’s house, so, in a sense, the two-person team expands to three. They also rely on Chip’s cell phone. Bobby Maurice—Bobby Mo—who works for Brickley Shoes, brings Chip a Jeep, and his presence adds to the theme of economics. Chip and Bobby’s relationship is transactional. Bobby has a car for Chip right away because Brickley wants to sign him. Bobby and Brickley view Chip as a potential source of substantial income, and Chip views Bobby as a means to an end. The relationship is strictly business, so Chip doesn’t even agree to give Bobby a ride back downtown when he asks for one. He leaves him to fend for himself, just as Brickley Shoes would ditch Chip if something adverse happened to his marketing potential.
At Wojenski’s house, Feinstein’s role as red herring continues to develop. Through dialogue, Feinstein makes Wojenski seem harmless but helpful. He refers to himself as an enervated “retired old man” (210) and ostensibly tries to identify the other people involved in the scheme.
Wojenski creates another red herring in Jurgensen by explaining Jurgensen’s connection to Duke, Chip’s dad, and Braman. He twists Jurgensen into the main culprit, which adds to the shock when they later discover Jurgensen is one of the good guys. Wojenski’s story about Jurgensen links to the theme of illusion versus reality. The idea that he and his wife arranged the scheme to fix the game as a means of exacting revenge on Chip’s dad is plausible, so it provides a credible motive for blackmail and helps divert the reporters from finding the true perpetrators of the scheme.
Extending Jurgensen’s red herring status, a car follows the trio back to New Orleans, and they discover that it belongs to Jurgensen. This builds on the illusion that Jurgensen is bad, although he’s following them at the behest of Chip’s dad, who wants to learn what’s going on. To figure out the license plate number, Susan Carol calls a male friend who “kind of likes [her],” and the mention of the friend “didn’t exactly thrill Stevie, but he resisted the urge to ask more questions” (221), so the romance plot returns in Chapter 14.
Back at the Superdome, Chip embodies the theme of teamwork and loyalty by refusing to go to the press conference without Susan Carol and Stevie. He yells at a guard and an NCAA representative who informs him that the organization could penalize his school for his late arrival at the press conference. The fine adds to the illusion that the NCAA is a tightly-regulated, rules-obsessed organization. In reality, college basketball is vulnerable to schemes and machinations.
Brill demonstrates his centrality to the mystery. Through the veteran sports journalist, Stevie and Susan Carol meet Feeley, the prominent Duke alumnus, and grill him on Jurgensen and the scheme. Using imagery, Feinstein helps the reader visualize Feeley’s wealth and big-shot persona. When the young reporters first see him, he’s watching golf “on the largest-screen TV Stevie had ever seen” (238) and smoking a cigar. The sit-down with Feeley gives the reader their first glimpse of Gary and adds to Susan Carol’s journalism IQ because she speaks to Feeley about Jurgensen alone so Brill can’t hear.
The bond between Stevie and Susan Carol grows tighter in Chapter 16. They don’t want to separate, so they have dinner together. Chapter 16 builds suspense as Stevie waits for Chip to call with the details of Feeley’s conversation with Jurgensen. This is another red herring because Feeley and Jurgensen aren’t on the same side. Through dialogue, Chip tells Stevie that the meeting didn’t go well, so this “was not the twist in the story they had been hoping for” (253). Feeley’s concocted failure sows doubt in the reader and leads to the story’s climax, in which Chip confronts the culprits in a seedy hotel away from the Final Four hoopla.
Chapter 16 ends in foreshadowing with Susan Carol’s email to Kelleher. This precaution has a major impact on the basketball star and the two reporters. Chapter 16’s conclusion also exposes Wojenski’s red herring status because he’s the person who opens the door to the suite.
