Mike had said that if the girl had been more accurate, she would have finished the school with better marks. Make said to the girl, " If you had been more accurate, you would have finished school with better marks." In reported speech you CAN backshift, , but you don't have to. In this case, the exact same thing was said in direct speech. There is no backshifting here. I don't understand what you mean by "twice backshifting."

check this link 1. http://www.grammaring.com/first-conditional-in-indirect-speech 2. http://www.tolearnenglish.com/english_lessons/conditional-in-reported-speech udachi :) :)

Thanks!

Hi Lyuba, You're using a third conditional here, which is about as far as you can backshift a conditional phrase anyway. The phrase is absolutely fine as far as I can see. The "had said" part is actually past perfect which, as far as I've looked, is not actually part of indirect speech. Even so, if the phrase began, "He said...", you would still keep the third conditional structure. If the conditional structure changes, then the possibility of the result changes dramatically.

There is a discussion of indirect (reported) speech and backshifting here: http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/reported.htm The sentence above I would say is correct, though in normal usage, I might expect "Mike said that if the girl had been more accurate, she would have finished the school wuth better marks" It would depend on the context. Actually, it is my understanding that backshifting is not necessarily required if what you are describing is still happening at present. "He said that he went to the university" (He went, but is not longer going to the university) "He said that he is going to the university." (He spoke in the past, but he is still going to the university now.) [Jura or any English expert, feel free to weigh in on this and give me a drubbing if I'm wrong here.]