By the time of the finals, the major competitor faced by Shi-jie and his team members is the team of Fireball University, led by Li Tian. Li used to be on the First University basketball team alongside Ting Wei and Xiao Lan, but became arrogant and was lured to their competitor's camp. The competing team composed of players who had been banned from all basketball games in Japan. Fireball University also bribed the referee of the final game. Although Wang Li had enlisted the aid of Shi-jie's kung-fu teachers, the opposing team had put in place a number of measures to prevent First University from winning, up to and including injuring First University's star players Shi-jie, Ting Wei and Xiao Lan. Thus, due to both unscrupulous fouls from the opposing team and the referee's biased decisions and outright interference by punching out the last ball that Shi-jie throws, First University is defeated. Unwilling to admit defeat to such unjust conditions, Shi-jie recalls a technique his first teacher had utilised, and manages to turn back the clock to the time just before Shi-jie is to make his last throw of the game. Given a second chance and instead of trying to make the same last throw which will be interfered by the referee again, Shi-jie decides to pass to Ting Wei, who in turn dunks it past Li Tian into the basket. Eventually, First University wins.