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 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “No Way Out”
Inside the hotel room, which is more of a suite, are Whiting, Wojenski, and the beefy Gary. Jurgensen is nowhere in sight because he isn’t part of the scheme. Jurgensen, it turns out, is good. Wojenski made Chip, Stevie, and Susan Carol think Jurgensen was a bad guy to buy himself more time until he figured out a better plan. Now, the men intend to hold Stevie and Susan Carol hostage until the championship game finishes. If Chip doesn’t play well and Minnesota State loses, the young reporters won’t face further harm.
Chip wants to know why the men are doing this, and Wojenski boils down their motives to one word: money. Together, the dean, Feeley, and Whiting bet around $5 million on tonight’s game. They made their bets in different places so as not to generate suspicion.
Gary has a gun and a roll of duct tape to restrain the teen journalists. Susan Carol tries to dissuade him from further involvement, but she fails. Gary turns on the TV, and Stevie and Susan Carol lighten the mood by making fun of the ESPN announcers and their analysis of tonight’s game.
The game starts, and Chip plays unevenly. Duke players block his shots, and he turns the ball over, but he does make a decent defensive play. Susan Carol is trying to get Gary to cut the tape around her ankles when someone knocks on the door. Suddenly, Gary falls backward and loses his gun. A man then punches Gary. The man is Jurgensen, and he frees the kidnapped reporters.
Chapter 18 Summary: “The Final Shot”
Jurgensen tapes Gary so he can’t alert anyone about the change of events. He then explains that he’s been following them to uncover what was going down. The security guard outside Chip’s hotel room told Chip’s dad about the teen visitors. Chip’s dad didn’t ask him about it because he thought his son might come to him with an explanation, and he didn’t want to add to his son’s stress due to the Final Four.
Instead, Coach Graber called Jurgensen. They’re not the rivals and enemies Wojenski claimed they are. Graber and Jurgensen are friends, and Jurgensen is Graber’s lawyer. Graber didn’t take the Davidson coaching position away from Jurgensen; rather, Jurgensen didn’t want the job. He didn’t want a career centered on “the whims of teenagers” (231), so he became a lawyer.
Jurgensen says Susan Carol’s email to Kelleher saved them. Kelleher called Jurgensen because he knew Jurgensen wasn’t a bad guy, and Jurgensen went to the seedy hotel to rescue them. He says Wojenski owes money on his house. He’ll explain the rest of the motives later.
When Susan Carol and Stevie arrive at the Superdome, there are under 11 minutes left, and Minnesota State is losing to Duke by 10. The young reporters run to Minnesota State’s bench so that he knows they’re ok and that he can play to win. With Chip performing better, Minnesota cuts Duke’s lead down to four points. The team then ties the score. Chip steals a pass and hits another game-winning three-pointer. The excitement and emotion bring Susan Carol and Stevie to tears.
The reporters must compose themselves to talk to the FBI agent Rick Applebaum. Jurgensen and Applebaum worked together previously, and Jurgensen helpfully points out the culprits. The Minnesota State president, Koheen, was also part of the scheme. Feeley’s billions were running low, so he and Koheen made a pact: Minnesota State would lose, Feeley could make a bet and win a notable sum of money, and Feeley would make Koheen Duke’s next president. Whiting would also go with Koheen to Duke.
Applebaum arrests Koheen on the court. He denies the charges and threatens to sue, but Applebaum doesn’t care. Brill and Weiss can’t believe what they’re witnessing, and Kelleher is glad the young reporters are safe. Applebaum can’t find Wojenski. He asks the teen journalists to hold off on their story until the culprits speak to him and his agents.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Telling the Story”
Seeing the president of a college whose basketball team just won the championship arrested on the court creates drama, but Coach Graber says he’ll only answer questions about the game, and Chip tells the press his poor play was due to nervousness and Duke’s good defense. Susan Carol, Stevie, and Chip reunite, and Chip explains his mixed feelings about not playing well. Susan Carol admits she was rooting for Chip despite her loyalty toward Duke. At a coffee place in the hotel, Susan Carol and Stevie finally tell their dads the truth, and their dads are relieved and proud.
Applebaum says Feeley and Whiting are cooperating with the investigation, so they might not have to face jail time. The FBI’s main target is Koheen, the mastermind of the plan. Wojenski is still missing, but Applebaum is confident his agents will find him. Brill and Weiss promise to run Susan Carol and Stevie’s story in their newspapers, which are prominent. Coach Graber thinks they should write a book, not a newspaper article. The story ends with another playful Gone with the Wind reference.
Chapters 17-19 Analysis
In Chapter 17, the reader and the three main characters learn the details of the crude plot at the same time. The setting adds to the vulgarity of the plan because it’s not a sophisticated space; there are “just some couches and a desk” (265). Whiting and Wojenski are “wearing the same sort of sickly smile” (265)—an image that adds to the nauseating atmosphere. Using dialogue, Feinstein has Wojenski and Whiting articulate the motives and benefits of their actions. Their explanations drive home the theme of money and its effect on morality and ethics in college sports. Wojenski confesses, “I’m not sure of the exact figure, but I’d estimate our group has about five million at stake tonight” (269).
Gary is there, too, and he has a gun and duct tape to restrain Stevie and Susan Carol until the championship finishes. The items add to Gary’s threatening character, yet Feinstein subverts Gary’s odiousness by putting him in a rather silly flowered shirt. Feinstein also brings levity or humor to the life-threatening climax when Susan Carol and Stevie make fun of the ESPN personalities and their clueless analysis of the game while they are restrained. Most of college basketball’s elite figures exist in an illusion or an alternate reality.
The end of Chapter 16 dramatically reveals Jurgensen’s red herring status. The narrator describes Jurgensen “burst[ing] into the room” and throwing a “flurry of punches” at Gary (276). Jurgensen’s dialogue exposes the truth about the scheme and shows the importance of Kelleher, who told Jurgensen the whereabouts of the kidnapped reporters because he knew he was a decent man. Without Susan Carol’s email and Kelleher’s alert response, the mystery would unfold differently, perhaps not in the favor of the three main characters.
The theme of teamwork persists because the teen journalists sneak by security at the Superdome and get close to the Minnesota State bench to let Chip know they’re fine and he is free to play his best. Partly out of concern for Stevie and Susan Carol, Chip didn’t play hard until there were under 11 minutes left in the game. The suspense of the championship game links to the drama of the hotel room and the fixing scheme. Together, the two incidents sustain the tension of the game and the mystery, as the tight, down-to-the-wire game parallels the close call back at the hotel.
Feinstein waits until the last chapters to reveal the central figure of the scheme: Koheen. He came up with the idea because he thought it would help him transition from being president of Minnesota State, which is not a big basketball school, to president of Duke, a powerhouse. The theme of money and immorality motivates Koheen too. The appearance of the FBI agent symbolizes morality, justice, and law and order. Applebaum and his agency apprehend all the culprits except Wojenski, which adds to the story’s realism: If Applebaum succeeded in immediately arresting every bad person, the end of the mystery might appear too neat. The loose end leaves the story a bit messy, echoing real life.
The theme of teamwork and loyalty appears in the final chapter as Susan Carol puts aside her adoration of Duke and roots for Minnesota State. With the story now out in the public, Susan Carol and Stevie stop lying to their dads and tell them the truth together. Yet they can’t write their story together until the FBI interviews the perpetrators. Applebaum underscores the imperfections of the justice system when he tells the young reporters that Feeley and Whiting are cooperating with the investigation and might avoid jail time. As was also true of college basketball, Stevie is disappointed when he learns some of the truth behind the inner workings of America’s legal procedures.
The story ends on a high note with the motif of journalism and the theme of fame. Brill and Weiss tell the young reporters their story will run in larger newspapers, which means more visibility. This anticipated fame isn’t depicted as negative because Stevie and Susan Carol earned it; they’re not the bombastic, misleading TV figureheads who are critiqued throughout the book but hardworking reporters. Feinstein adds a flirty moment that recalls the book’s earlier references to Gone with the Wind when Stevie calls Susan Carol “Scarlett” (305) one last time. He also uses irony to set the stage for another book about the duo: Stevie hopes he won’t have to deal with another situation like this. Since he’s a character in a series, this conclusion ends the book by suggesting further intrigue for the characters.
