XXVII. Away games
Coach Smith and Derrick were right, after the game between the Lions of Colombia and the Princeton Tigers, the head coach of the Harvard Crimson, Tommy Amak, had already been studying the video of Li Wu's game, and for this purpose, he had gathered the main team and rotation guards of the Harvard Crimson for a meeting.
In this regard, the scoring champion of the Crimson team, the double can for Wesley Saunders is very disdainful: "Mr. coach, although this Chinese shoots accurately, I think it is the Princeton players who do not give them enough defensive intensity, as long as she is closely defended and presses his shooting space, he cannot score so many goals." ”
Amak was a black man, but he didn't have the humor and cynicism of a black man, but he was a very serious academic coach. Hearing his own evaluation of Li Wu, Amak's face sank: "Wesley, this year is your fourth year of playing in college, but you still can't see the advantages of the other party, as you said, as long as you defend this Chinese oppressively, you can limit his shooting touch, but you take a serious look, his running speed and the flexibility of using more than 100 blocks to chase defense, who do you think our team can keep up?" ”
Wesley subconsciously glanced at the backup point guard, defensive titan Corbin Miller, who was only 188cm tall and shook his head again and again, indicating that he couldn't keep up with Li Wu's speed.
Seeing his teammates shaking their heads, Wesley smiled sheepishly, "You're right, sir, what should we do with this kid." ”
"It's simple, joint defense! We don't have to defend people, we can defend the ball. You are the defenders of the team, I have only one request for you, as long as this Chinese starts to run, you don't chase like a fool, he will use the cover of his teammates to leave you behind. So, when he starts running, you just have to do one thing, go and get the guy with the ball right away! As for which area this kid ran to, and the person responsible for defending that area was watching, we had to use the joint defense to cut off the connection between this Chinese and his teammates. ”
After talking about how to deal with Li Wu's performance on the offensive end, Amak began to say about the defensive end: "This Chinese has a very high level of ball breaking in the short corner, so I hope you don't easily try to pass the ball into the inside, tomorrow, we will start practicing the tactics of 15 arc top block and air cut!" Our strength is athleticism, not positional warfare. ”
At the same time as Amak's targeted arrangement, Li Wu is also stepping up the practice of "Dragon Catcher", and then use this set of countless skills in basketball, Li Wu can be said to have improved by leaps and bounds in the past few days of training, and now he is confident that he has been able to give full play to his speed advantage when dribbling, and under the control of the Dragon Catcher, he is confident that no one can break his ball.
With two days to go until his match against the Harvard Crimson, Li Wu has a 90 percent success rate with a misplaced singles against tall, slow-moving players like Luke, Osettkowski, and Jeff Backrest, and a 100 percent success rate if it weren't for his lack of skill in the dragon catch.
In the last two days of the game, Coach Smith began to let the team practice tactics, because Li Wu developed offensive skills in addition to holding the ball, so in addition to the previous three projection blocking tactics, Coach Smith set up three blocking and dismantling tactics for Li Wu at the top of the arc and the left and right wings, in order to prevent Amak from making targeted arrangements for Li Wu.
Abby Hornacek has been a competent recorder these days, and after training she will take a little time to make various interviews with Li Wu, and now she is most interested in Li Wu's combination of martial arts and practice, which is the most novel training method she has ever heard, he has seen volleyball players play basketball, rugby players play basketball, but even martial arts to play basketball, she has seen it for the first time.
But with this feature, Li Wu is very valuable for interviews.
On February 12, there was still one day left for the game against Harvard University, but Coach Smith had already taken the coaching staff and players on the train from New York to Boston, the capital and largest city of Massachusetts in the United States, which is very close to Harvard University, and you can get off at South Station and go directly to Harvard University by subway.
The arrival of Li Wu made Coach Smith have the ambition to take the Colombian Lions into the "March Madness", so he now attaches great importance to every game, the Harvard Crimson team is a strong team, plus they are at home, so Coach Smith hopes that the players will rest better, so he did not let the players go directly to Harvard for the evening game in the morning.
As for Abby, who promised Li Wu that he would be there every game, he chose to drive to Harvard University by himself, and in order for Li Wu to have a good rest the day before the game, Abby canceled the interview on the day he first arrived at Harvard, saying that he would appear in the stands on time.
Originally, Li Wu also planned to give Abby a ticket, but Abby smiled and said that his classmates in CBS would help him get a ticket, so Li Wu didn't need to worry.
It stands to reason that anyone who goes to Harvard University likes to touch the gold leather shoes, but for the students of Columbia University, there is no such interest, because the legend says that after touching the gold leather shoes of this statue, you can be admitted to Harvard University, and for the students of Columbia University, who are also Ivy League, there is nothing great about entering Harvard University.
So as soon as they arrived, the players immediately fell asleep in the hotel arranged by Coach Smith, then went to familiarize themselves with the stadium the next day, had an early dinner at 3 p.m., and gathered in the away dressing room at 5 p.m. to prepare for the 7 p.m. game.
In the locker room, Maodore smiled and said to Li Wu: "Hey, Lee, this is your first away game in your life, you have to be mentally prepared, the boos of the away fans are like the rotten air conditioning of a hundred 82-year-old Ford cars, it is very ugly, every time I go away, my free throw shooting percentage will drop." ”
"It's okay, it seems that there are only 2,100 seats in the Lavites Cultural and Sports Gym, which is hundreds less than when we came to the Venn Gymnasium, and I think Lee will adapt to this decibels." Kyle said with a smile.
At this time, Coach Smith entered the locker room and announced the starting list, Li Wu, who had been added a few tactics and changed into the No. 6 jersey, still did not appear in the starting lineup, this time the starting list was exactly the same as the previous two times, after announcing the starting lineup, Coach Smith said to Luke and Osetkowski: "I don't ask much of you, I just want to try to consume Steve Mundu Mies's physical strength, as for Wesley Sanders, give him to Maodore." ”